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PICTURES 



OF THE FRENCH: 



A SERIES OF 



LITERARY AND GRAPHIC DELINEATIONS OF FRENCH CHARACTER. 
BY JULES JANIN, BALZAC, CORMENIN, 

AND OTHER CELEBRATED FRENCH AUTHORS. 



WITH UPWARDS OF TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY ENGRAVINGS, 

DRAWN ON THE WOOD BY GAVARNI, H. MONNIER, AND MEISSONIER, 

AND ENGRAVED BY LAVIEILLE, ETC. 



LONDON: 

Wm. S. ORR AND CO., PATERNOSTER ROW. 



MDCCCXL. 



& 



*\ 



.f«a 



London : 

Printed by T. Baker & Co., 

Holbom Hill. 




LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS, 



THE NAMES OF THE ARTISTS. 



INTRODUCTION, by Jules Janin 
Headpiece 



Page 

. ix 



THE PARISIAN LADY, by H. de Balzac 

Portrait 
Headpiece 
Letter 
Tailpiece 



Gavarni 


Lavieille 


1 


Id. 


Id. 


1 


Id. 


Verdeil 


1 


Id. 


Lavieille 


8 



THE GROCER, by H. de Balzac 
Portrait 
Headpiece 

Letter 
Tailpiece 



Gavarni Lavieille 9 

Id. Id. 9 

Id. Id. 9 

Id. Id. 16 



THE GRISETTE, by Jules Janin 

Portrait 
Headpiece 
Letter 
Tailpiece 



Gavarni 


Lavieille 


«i 


Id. 


Id. 


17* 


Id. 


Id. 


17 


Id. 


Id. 


24 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



THE LAW STUDENT, 


by E. DE LA. Bedollierre 






25 


Portrait 




. Gavarni 


Lavieille 


25 


Headpiece 




Id. 


Id. 


25 


Letter 




Id. 


Id. 


25 


Tailpiece 




Id. 


Id. 


32 




POLITICAL LADIES, by Comte H. de Viel-Castel 

Portrait 

Headpiece . . 

Letter .... 

Tailpiece .... 



Gavarni 


Lavieille 


33 


Id. 


Id. 


33 


Id. 


Id. 


33 

40 



THE LITERARY ADVENTURER, by Alberic Second 
Portrait 

Headpiece .... 

Letter . 
Tailpiece .... 

THE MONTHLY NURSE, by Mad. de Bawr 

Portrait . 

Headpiece .... 

Letter . 

Tailpiece . . . . 



Gavarni 


Lavieille 


41 


Id. 


Id. 


41 


Id. 


Id. 


41 


Id. 


Id. 


48 
49 


H. MONNIER 


Lavieille 


49 


Id. 


Id. 


49 


Id. 


Id. 


49 


Id. 


Id. 


56 




THE " RAPIN," by J. Chaudes-Aigues 

Portrait 
Headpiece 
Letter 
Tailpiece . 



Gavarni 


Lavieille 


57 


Id. 


Id. 


57 


Id. 


Id. 


57 


Id. 


Id. 


64 




A LEADER OF FASHION, by Mad. Ancelot 

Portrait 

Headpiece 

Letter 



. 65 

Gavarni Lavieille 65 

Id. Louis 65 

Id. Lavieille 65 




THE PHYSICIAN, by L. Roux 

Portrait 
Headpiece 
Letter 
Tailpiece 



Gavarni 


Lavieille 


73 


Id. 


Id. 


73 


Id. 


Id. 


73 


Id. 


Id. 


80 



THE ATTORNEY, by Altaroche 

Portrait 

Headpiece 

Letter 



. 81 

H. Monnier Lavieille 81 

Id. Gerard 81 

Id. Lavieille 81 



THE FIGURANTE, by Philibert Audebrand 

Portrait 

Headpiece 

Letter 

Tailpiece .... 



Gavarni 


Lavieille 


89 


Id. 


Guilbaut 


89 


Id. 


Fagnion 


89 


Id. 


Id. 


96 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



THE VIRTUOSO, by Comtb H. de Viel-Castel . 
Portrait 

Headpiece . 

Letter . ... 

Tailpiece .... 



Gavarni 


LAVIEILLE 


97 


Id. 


Id. 


97 


Id. 


Id. 


97 


Id. 


Id. 


104 




THE DUCHESS, by M. de Courchamps 

Portrait 

Headpiece 

Letter 



. 105 

Gavarni Louis 105 

Gagniet Loiseau 105 

Id. Gerard 112 




THE MIDWIFE, by L. Roux 

Portrait 
Headpiece 
Letter 
Tailpiece 



Gavarni 

Gagniet 

Gavarni 

Id. 



. 113 

Lavieille 113 
Belhatte 113 

SOYER 113 

Loiseau 120 



THE HORTICULTURIST, by Alphonse Karr 

Portrait 

Headpiece 

Letter .... 

The Horticulturist and his Rose-tree 

Tailpiece .... 



Gavarni 


Lavieille 


121 


Gagniet 


SOYER 


121 


Id. 


Id. 


124 


Id. 


Id. 


124 


Id. 


Id. 


126 




THE COURT OF ASSIZE, by Cormenin 
Portrait 
Headpiece 

Letter 

Judges asleep . 
The Opening Speech 
The Public in Court 
Tailpiece . 



Gavarni 


Lavieille 


127 


Id. 


Id. 


127 


Id. 


Id. 


127 


Gagniet 


Verdeil 


128 


Id. 


Loiseau 


131 


Id. 


Id. 


133 


Gavarni 


Lavieille 


136 




THE ACTRESS'S MOTHER, by J. Couailhac 

Portrait 

Headpiece 

Letter . 

Aurelia reading 

M. Charles Lousteau 

Aurelia's Protector 

Her Femme-de-Chambre 

The Stage Manager 

Portrait of Aurelia 

Mad. St. Robert . 

The Lamplighter 

Mad. St. Julian 

Tailpiece 



n. lVlONNIER 

Id. 


JLiAVIEILLE 

Gerard 


137 

137 


Id. 


Id. 


137 


Gagniet 


Laisne 


138 


Id. 


Verdeil 


140 


Id. 


IcL 


141 


H. MONNIER 


Gerard 


143 


Id. 


Lavieille 


144 


Gavarni 


Id. 


145 


H. Monnier 


Gerard 


145 


Id. 


Lavieille 


147 


Id. 


Gerard 


149 


Id. 


Lavieillb 


152 



THE DILETTANTE, by Albert Cler 

Portrait 

Headpiece 

Letter 



. 153 

H. Monnier Lavieille 153 

Id. Laisne 153 

Id. Loiseau 153 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 




THE CHESS-PLAYER, by Mery 
Portrait 
Headpiece 
Letter 



Gavarni 


. lbl 
Guillaumot 161 


Gagniet 


Belhatte 161 


Id. 


Id. 161 



THE GREAT LADY OF 1830, by Mad. de Longueville 




Portrait 


. Gavarni 


Lavieille 


169 


Headpiece .... 


Gagniet 


Id. 


169 


Letter .... 


Id. 


Breval 


169 


Tailpiece .... 


Id. 


Fagnion 


176 


THE HOSPITAL ATTENDANT, by P. Bernard 






177 


Portrait 


. Gavarni 


LOISEAU 


177 


Headpiece .... 


Gagniet 


Id. 


177 


Letter .... 


Id. 


Id. 


177 


Jean going his rounds 


Id. 


Id. 


180 


Jean arguing 


Id. 


Id. 


182 




THE GOVERNMENT CLERK, by Paul Duval . . . .185 

Portrait .... Gavarni Lavieille 185 

Headpiece .... Gagniet Guillaumot 185 

Letter .... Id. Id. 185 




THE KEEPER OF THE TABLE D'HOTE, by Augusts Delacroix 
Portrait .... Gavarni 

Headpiece . . . . Gagniet 



Letter 



Id. 



Soyer 193 

Breval 193 

Deschamps 193 




THE PENSIONER, by A. Lorentz 

Portrait 

Headpiece 

Letter 

Thirteen small Illustrations 

\ 

THE CANONESS, by Eli as Regnault . 

Portrait 

Headpiece 

Letter 



THE COUNTRY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES, by Ecarnot . 

Portrait .... Gavarni 

Headpiece .... Gagniet 



Lorentz 


GUILBAUT 


201 


Id. 


Id. 


201 


Id. 


Id. 


201 


Id. 


Id. 205- 


-208 
209 


Gavarni 


Lavieille 


209 


Gagniet 


Odiardi 


209 


Id. 


Breval 


209 



Letter 

The Music-master 

The Dancing-master 



Id. 
Id. 
Id. 



Lavieille 


217 


Id. 


217 


Id. 


217 


GUILBAUT 


220 


Belhatte 


221 



THE DEPUTY, by Eugene Briffault 
Portrait 
Headpiece 
Letter 



Gavarni 

Gagniet 

lil. 



. 225 

Stipulkowski 225 

Cherrikr 225 

Id. 225 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 








THE PARISIAN LADY'S MAID, by Auguste Lacroix 

Portrait 

Headpiece 

Letter .... 



THE SPECULATOR, by Viscount D'Arlincourt 
Portrait ... 

Headpiece . . . . 

Letter .... 



THE UNAPPRECIATED LADY, by Frederic Soulie 
— Portrait . 

Headpiece .... 
Letter . 

THE USHER, by Eugene Nyon 
Portrait 

Headpiece . 

Letter . 

THE CHARWOMAN, by Charles Rouget 
Portrait . 

Headpiece .... 
Letter . 

THE " CANUT," by Joanny Augier 
Portrait . 

Headpiece .... 
Letter . 
The " Canut " in his working dress 



. Gavarni 


Lavieille 


233 


Gagniet 


Id. 


233 


Id. 


Faure 


233 
241 


. Gavarni 


Lavieille 


241 


Trimolet 


Guilbaut 


241 


Id. 


SOYER 


241 



Gavarni 


Loiseau 


249 


Trimolet 


SOYER 


249 


Id. 


Id. 


249 
257 


Gavarni 


Lavieille 


257 


Id. 


Belhatte 


257 


Gagniet 


Odiardi 


257 
265 


H. Monnier 


Lavieille 


265 


Id. 


Breval 


265 


Gagniet 


Gerard 


265 

273 


Gavarni 


Faure 


273 


Gagniet 


Id. 


273 


Id. 


Id. 


273 



Trimolet Lavieille 277 





THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, by Raoul Perrin . 

Portrait .... Gavarni 

Headpiece .... Gagniet 

Letter . Gavarni 
^ Tailpiece .... Id. 



THE PUPIL OF THE ACADEMY, by L. Couailhac 

Portrait of Pupil for the Drama 
Headpiece .... 
Letter .... 
^ Portrait of Pupil for the Ballet 



THE ARTISTS' FRIEND, by Francis Wey 
Portrait 
Headpiece 
Letter 

M. Saint Eugene 
The Artists' Friend enthroned 
The Artists' Friend grinding colours 
The old Artists' Friend 
Tailpiece 



Odiardi 


279 


Nivet 


279 


Perville 


279 


Fontaine 


288- 



Gavarni 


Birouste 289 


Trimolet 


Id. 289 


Id. 


Id. 289 


Gavarni 


GUILLAUMOT 297 



H. Monnier 


Lavieille 


300 


Id. 


Gerard 


300 


Id. 


SOYER 


300 


Id. 


Belhatte 


302 


Id. 


Gerard 


303 


Id. 


Laisne 


306 


Id. 


Id. 


309 


Id. 


Gerard 


312 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



THE CATHOLIC PRIEST, by A. Delaforest 

Portrait 

Headpiece 

Letter 



Gavarni 

Gagniet 

Id. 



. 313 

GUILLAUMOT 313 

Id. 313 

GUILBAUT 313 




THE FRUITERER, by Francois Coquille 

Portrait 

Headpiece 

Letter 

THE " VIVEUR," by Eugene Briffault 

Portrait 

Headpiece 

Letter 



.321 

H. Monnier Lavieille 321 

Id. Fontaine 321 

GAGNIEr GUILBAUT 321 



Gavarni Lavieille 329 

Meissonier Id. 329 

Id. Louis 329 




THE WET-NURSE, by A. Achard 
Portrait 
Headpiece 
Letter 



. 337 

Gavarni Soyer 337 

Gagniet Loiseau 337 

Id. Gerard 337 




THE " REVENDEUSE-A-LA-TOILETTE," by Arnould Fremy 

Portrait .... Gavarni 

Headpiece . . . .Gagniet 

Letter .... Gavarni 



THE PEER OF FRANCE, by Marie Aycard 

Portrait 

Headpiece 

Letter 

The Confessor . 

Peers talking together 

The Orator 

Caliste 

Tailpiece 



. 345 

Louis 345 

Odiardi 845 

Breval 845 



Gavarni 


Lavieille 


351 


Gagniet 


Faure 


351 


Id. 


Breval 


351 


Id. 


Verdeil 


356 


Id. 


Gerard 


357 


Id. 


Id. 


358 


Id. 


Verdeil 


358 


Trimolet 


Laisne 


361 









AESal 


rls 


rJK 


!»S 


bl 


IfcS 




n&m 


Wmm 




y?. 



All writers have been more or less indebted 

to the public for their observations ; and the 

lyg most popular and successful authors are 

those who, having borrowed much from \^ 
their contemporaries, repay them by leav- 
ing to posterity a faithful record of their 

manners. This has made Moliere the Ii 
first dramatist in the world: no writer ever owed 
more to the vices, follies, and passions of man- 
kind. Fortunately for future observers, though hu- 
^ manity remain unaltered, its forms vary and change 
to infinity. Every century — nay, every year — has its 
distinguishing characteristics: society modifies its vices 
and follies as a fashionable lady changes the form of 
her dresses and trinkets; and since milliners have their 
Sybilline leaves to explain the oft-recurring revolutions 
of their empire, why should not the French — the most 
fickle and frivolous people in the world — keep a re- 
gister in which to write down the daily transformations 
of their manners, with all their shades and peculiarities ? 

La Bruyere, the most sagacious moralist of modern times, has remarked, 
that " not a year passes that would not furnish materials for a volume of 

a 



X INTRODUCTION. 

characters." If such a yearly record had been handed down to us, without 
interruption, since the time of Theophrastus, it would be impossible to 
imagine a more varied, instructive, and amusing work. But no. Neglecting 
to describe mankind, historians have wasted their talents on dry and 
minute accounts of battles and sieges, bloody wars, and treaties of peace. 
They have told us how our forefathers fought, but not how they lived ; we 
are informed of the fashion of their swords and shields, but not of their 
every-day costume ; we can study their laws, but we are left in ignorance 
of their manners and customs. Hence the many centuries that have 
elapsed since the origin of the social existence of mankind, have been 
almost lost to the observation and history of every-day life. 

How limited the number of moralists who have stooped to record the 
simple annals of every-day existence ! Among the countless hosts of 
authors, how few the comic poets compared with the logicians, metaphy- 
sicians, and even casuists ! Homer, Theophrastus, Plautus, and Terence, 
are, among the ancients, the only authors whose works furnish lively 
descriptions of the manners of their respective ages. Public life, in modern 
times, has at once comic and serious representatives in Moliere and 
La Bruyere : the one the historian and the faithful friend of the people ;. 
the other the historian — certainly not the friend — of the Court. After 
these two great masters, subordinate writers occasionally appeared — 
St. Foix and Mercier, for instance. But many tavern moralists, and 
low caricaturists, are not worth mentioning ! What a pleasure those 
valets-de-chambre of history took in reducing their heroes to the most 
contemptible proportions ! To these limners of mawkish sketches on 
kitchen walls, even satirists are preferable — an ill-bred and ferocious crew, 
it must be confessed, who yet contrive to produce likenesses, however 
exaggerated and distorted, and whose writings bear the same analogy to 
history as a dagger to a lancet. 

But it is not our province to inquire into the merits of all the tribe of 
moralists. We intend to examine how we may contrive to leave for our 
posterity a record of our manners and every-day life, bearing in mind the 
inevitable truth, that a time will come when we ourselves shall be spoken of 
as ancestors and forefathers. Our estimation of our own merits, however 
humble, will certainly be above the mark ; and nothing will prevent our 
falling headlong into the yawning gulf of history. Therefore, as we are 
on the verge of the precipice, let us, while it is yet time, take measures 
to fall with becoming dignity; otherwise our foot may slip, or we may turn 
giddy, and so topple like drunkards or lazy slumberers to the bottom of 
the abyss. 

We should remember that our descendants will feel a natural curiosity 
to know what sort of men we were, and how we employed our time ; the 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

cut of our coats, and the fashion of our wives' dresses; whether our houses 
were built of stone or of brick ; what was our interpretation of the word 
Beauty, subject to so many different meanings ; how we rode our horses ; 
how our dinners were dressed, and what was our taste in wines; what 
kind of poetry was most esteemed by us ; whether we powdered our hair, 
and wore top-boots, — to say nothing of hundreds of other questions that 
would to-day put us all to the blush, yet which may and will naturally 
arise in the minds of our great-grandchildren. The bare anticipation is 
enough to make one's hair stand on end. 

We must, however, resign ourselves to our fate, my dear contem oraries. 
Our sayings and doings of to-day will at some future time make part of 
history. A hundred years hence, people will with astonishment speak of our 
asphaltum pavements, our diminutive steamers, our imperfectly-constructed 
railroads. Who knows! — our descendants will perhaps wonder at our 
small theatres, at the classic style of our modern dramas, and the chastity 
of our vaudevilles. In future times, our Paris will be mentioned as the 
metropolis of an ancient kingdom, which absorbed the whole realm, which 
formed the gathering-point of all the beauty, wit, genius, and wealth of the 
nation ; but where also virtue and vice, all the miseries of life, and happy 
illusions, were mingled together. It will be recorded that in this metro- 
polis we spent our time. in speaking, writing, reading, and listening; that 
speeches were every morning printed in the papers ; that speeches were in 
the middle of the day delivered from the rostrum, and appeared in print 
in the evening ; that the almost exclusive preoccupation of the Parisians 
was whether they would make better speeches on the morrow than the 
day before ; that they had no other ambition, and that for them the rest 
of the world might be reduced to chaos, provided every morning brought 
them their cup of coffee, and their share of ready-made wit. It will be 
added of the great French capital, so proud of its unity, that it consisted 
of five or six faubourgs — each a little city within itself — as well separated 
from each other as if the great wall of China marked their boundaries. 

La Bruyere and Moliere had nothing to describe beyond the court and 
the town. In their days there was no other distinction ; and whoever did 
not belong to the one necessarily belonged to the other. It was then the 
fashion, in the public walks, to stop and stare one another in the face; and 
women were wont to flock there to display their dress, and contest the 
admiration of the loungers. There were in Paris magistrates of the long 
and short robe ; young judges affecting the dandy ; Crispins who were 
fain to borrow horses of their friends, in order to sport a carriage and six ; 
and citizens who loved to boast of their pack of hounds. There was Andre 
the merchant, who gave splendid entertainments to Elamire, without ob- 
taining the honour of a public notice ; Narcissus who rose in the morning 



Xll INTRODUCTION. 

only in order to go to bed at night; and the wealthy, handsome, witty 

Theramene, dreaded by husbands and abominated by suitors. In those 
days, Paris aped Versailles. The city dames, in imitation of the ladies at 
court, used to ruin themselves in furniture and lace ; and on the wedding- 
day they would recline in state on their bed, exposed to the public gaze. 
It was then the custom for acquaintances to run after one another, as if 
they were anxious to meet. It was also the fashion to be ignorant of the 
commonest things in the world — not to be able to tell w T heat from rye. 
Citizens had begun, at that early day, to drive their carriage, and light 
their mansions with wax ; gold and silver, which erst used to be safely 
deposited in iron chests, now glittered on sideboards and dining-tables ; no 
longer could the real lady be distinguished, so far as appearance went, from 
the tradesman's wife ; all Paris seemed to have conspired to forget the old 
piece of civic wisdom, which teaches that the magnificent and costly dis- 
play of the great and wealthy becomes extravagant folly and deception 
when attempted by private individuals. 

Such was the metropolis of France a hundred and sixty years since. 
Modern Paris may certainly be recognized beneath some of these general 
features, yet how great the difference ! In the above feeble outline, the 
Elector, the Juryman, and the National Guard, are unnoticed, or con- 
sidered as impossible chimeras; the Artist and the Author are invisible; the 
Speculator and Capitalist are forgotten. Neither the Parisian Grisette, nor 
the Gamin, nor the Actress, nor the Courtezan, can be seen. The moralist 
passes over the Government Clerk, the Half-pay Officer, the Savant given 
up to his studies ; and the K Man of the People/ 5 whose existence had 
hardly commenced, yet who was already in secret meditating the attack 
on the abhorred Bastille. On reperusing La Bruyere^s Cai^acteres, one 
can at first fancy that the pictures are not entirely unknown, and that one 
has somewhere or other seen the originals or their prototypes ; but on a 
closer inspection it becomes apparent, that though the stage is still the 
same, the actors are quite different. Hence the necessity of from time to 
time retracing these mutable and evanescent pictures. 

We shall have a mighty revolution in our national manners to record. 
A hemisphere has disappeared like volcanic isles which, observed by navi- 
gators, sink beneath the waves ere the next vessel sails that way. Side by 
side with the then despised Paris, there was, in those days, the omnipotent 
and all-sufficient court. And what has become of the mighty court? 
Where has the haughty world of gold and silk taken refuge? Where, in 
this nineteenth century, shall we look for that adept in the science of dis- 
simulation and physiognomy, the bland courtier ? What has become of 
those men of embroidered tunics, who were wont to haunt the ante- 
chambers and stairs of marble palaces, the abodes of royalty, and of the 



INTRODUCTION. Xlll 

most polite gentlemen in the world? Where shall we seek the race of 
servile adulators whose eye cowered at sight of their sovereign — men of 
violent and overbearing temper; fulsomely obsequious in the antechamber; 
despicable in the drawing-room ; flattering, attentive, insinuating, devoted 
slaves of women, whose ears they would not scruple to offend with grossly 
indelicate discourse ? These men of note in their day, these leaders of 
fashion, these refiners of the arts of luxury and dissipation, these retainers 
of the Rohans, the Foix, the Chatillons, the Montmorencies — all have dis- 
appeared. 

Singular state of society ! when it was impossible to live without begging, 
and when beggars were also impertinent and saucy; when the most clever 
among the courtiers contrived to live at once on the Churchy the Army, 
and the Bench ; when all passed their lives begging and receiving, con- 
gratulating and calumniating one another ; when everybody went masked 
without hiding their features ; when forgetfulness, pride, hard-heartedness, 
and ingratitude, were current coin of the court ; when honour, virtue, and 
probity were of no avail. 

Such, however, was Versailles. But how changed now ! Royalty has 
become so humble, that a few citizens are scarcely seen raising their hat 
on the passage of the king who rebuilt the Palace. All the philosophers 
since Solomon's days have not taught us such a lesson as this on the vanity 
of human greatness. A more forcible argument could not possibly be 
urged in proof of the necessity of at frequent intervals recompiling the 
history of poor human nature. 

The society described by La Bruyere has passed away; not a vestige 
survived the first Revolution. Yet have we still much to remind us of the 
social system once in operation in France. We have, for instance, preserved 
the " vocabulary of set phrases," which we still use to congratulate one 
another. Now, as formerly, a with five or six technical terms of art, and 
nothing more," a man sets up for a connoisseur in music, painting, archi- 
tecture, and gastronomy. Now, as when La Bruyere wrote, there is no 
lack of people whose w r ealth and politeness stand them instead of wit and 
merit, who are as shallow-brained as sheep, and whom fortune's favours 
visit by mere accident. But fortunes are differently made now-a-days, and 
are no longer to be acquired as of yore : the sovereign has changed, and 
the people have their flatterers in their turn. Do not fancy that a modern 
ambitious man would seek his fortune at court, forsooth ! When La 
Bruyere speaks of "favour/' he has no occasion to say ee royal" favour, 
which was understood. At the present day, when favour is mentioned, an 
epithet is indispensable to be understood; nay, to express oneself correctly, 
Ci popular favour" is the phrase. We know no other favour than that. 
Whence it follows, that the more French society has divided, the more 



INTRODUCTION. 



difficult has its analysis become. That great kingdom has been par- 
celled out into an infinity of small republics, each of which has its laws, 
its customs, its dialects, its heroes, its political opinions — in the absence of 
religious belief — its faults, its objects of ambition and of love. The French 
soil has not been more incessantly subdivided since the confiscation and 
the sale of the nobles* estates. How, then, should the same essayist pene- 
trate into all those distant regions, of whose roads, language, and customs 
he is ignorant ? How should the same moralist understand all these vari- 
ous languages, and each different dialect? Should he chance to lose his 
way, and to mistake one province for another, how great would be his 
astonishment on finding the costume, characters, habits, and manners of 
the inhabitants, entirely different from what he expected ! It is therefore 
necessary that the arduous task of observing and delineating character 
should be divided between several writers, that competent historians should 
be selected for each department, that each writer should have heard and 
seen what he professes to describe. It was all very well formerly for one 
writer to undertake the whole of such a work, when France consisted only 
of the court and the metropolis ; but at the present day, when no class is 
confined within fixed limits, and when all the elements of French society 
are scattered and thrown into confusion, let all keen and humorous ob- 
servers concur to produce this play of a thousand and one varied acts. 

In order fully to understand the necessity of dividing the labour as 
much as the subjects are divided, open at random a chapter or two of 
La Bruyere, and you will see what an infinite variety of materials at present 
exist, unknown when the Caracteres were written. The first chapter 
treats of Works of Genius. Since La Bruyere's days, this simple chapter 
has become subject majtter for an immense book, that should include all the 
details of literary life — a state of existence, and a new means of rising to 
importance, undreamt of in the seventeenth century. At that time, " book- 
making, like clock-making, was simply a trade." In our days, alas ! the 
" trade" has degenerated, and may with greater propriety be likened to 
cobbling. In La Bruyere's time, no chef d'ceuvre, " the joint produce of 
several hands/* had ever been seen ; now it is an every-day occurrence. 
La Bruyere would not allow the critic to go beyond pointing out to the 
public (i the quality of the paper and the binding, and the price of the 
book reviewed/* If La Bruyere were now alive, he would certainly be the 
first among those critics whose office he held in such sovereign contempt. 

In the seventeenth century, literary life was hardly beginning ; nor are 
we, even at the present day, quite certain that it has commenced in earnest. 
Heaven alone knows how it will be after another hundred years ! 

Then there is a chapter on Personal Merit, in which mention is made of 
a the difficulty of acquiring a great name" so easily obtained now-a-days — 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

of the vast intellectual resources necessary for men to live u without places 
and situations at Court" while, at the present day, place and public em- 
ployment are only accepted by men of moderate capacity, destitute of 
ambition. In the same chapter it is stated, that " the children of the great 
are not amenable to the ordinary rules of nature ;" that " they have little 
or nothing to expect from time and the progress of events ;" and that 
u for them death precedes old age." This was written in the Duke of 
Burgundy's infancy. The children of the kings now-a-days sit on the 
same form at college with plain citizens' sons, and acquire knowledge only 
by dint of patient study. When they are rewarded with the second histo- 
rical prize of their class, they must have deserved it better than their 
schoolfellows. Briefly, there is no comparison between the u personal 
merit" of to-day and the "personal merit" of the seventeenth century. 

Neither does the profound chapter on Women bear any analogy with 
our notions of the fair sex in the present day. Survey them as you will 
from top to toe, incredible difference will be observed between our ladies 
and La Bruyere's. General resemblance only survives : there are the 
same love of expense, of dress, of jewellery; the same affectation, the 
same coquetry, the same caprice ever attendant on beauty as its counter- 
poise ; woman is still the same coquettish, intriguing, perfidious, capri- 
cious being, — yet what innumerable features have disappeared 1 Whither 
have you fled, Celie, who were in love by turns with Roscius, Bathylle, the 
tumbler Cobus, and the flute-player Dracon ? What has become of the 
domestic tyrant, known formerly in noble families as the spiritual director, 
the father-confessor ? Where shall we now turn to behold the devout 
woman " who tried to deceive God, but deceived herself! 1 " — for the learned 
woman, "upon whom one looks as upon a fine piece of armour?" They 
have all disappeared ; but we have in our time a host of female characters 
who were unknown in the seventeenth century — from the genius in faded 
bonnet and ragged stockings to the recently-discovered Philosophical Lady 
of thirty years of age. 

In matters relative to love, we have, now-a-days, dishevelled passions, 
Cupids at daggers-drawing, criminal attachments better regulated than 
marriages, Adonises with splendid beards a la Henri IV. , and moonlight 
ravings ; the tender passion has degenerated into a thing of outward show; 
the feelings are, in these times, exhibited as a jeweller displays his wares in 
his window : thus have love and gallantry, two articles which moralists 
were wont to turn to such excellent account, been cruelly destroyed. 

And where now can we find the drawing-room ? What, we ask, has be- 
come of Parisian conversation, that elegant proficiency in which the French 
people erst so justly prided themselves ? We can transport ourselves in 
imagination into one of the sumptuous drawing-rooms of by-gone days, in 



XVI INTRODUCTION. 

the Hotel de Rambouillet, at Mile, de L^Enclos', or at Mme. de Sevigne's. 
The air is redolent of poetry and genius ! Beaux-esprits of all denomina- 
tions are admitted; slanderers, satirists, and {vara aves !) good-natured 
wits ; orators, moralists, learned men, and even " purists." Elegant and 
polished wit is the unique centre of these delightful reunions, where Bossuet 
read his first sermon, — where Moliere first read Tartufe. But now-a-days, 
what a change ! Take care, ladies, get out of the way ; and mind your 
laced scarfs ! Here comes a bevy of our fashionable young men, occu- 
pying the whole breadth of the Boulevard, their spurred heels clattering on 
the asphaltum, cigars in their mouths, and their hats nailed on their heads ! 
Thank your stars, ladies, if you escape unhurt through the clouds of 
tobacco-smoke, and the practical jokes of those elegant young men ! 

Even the man of fortune of former days has undergone a complete 
metamorphosis. He was reckoned a rich man in the seventeenth century 
who could afford to eat entremets, to hang oil-paintings round his apart- 
ments, to keep a town and a country-house, to drive his own carriage, and 
to marry one of his daughters to a duke. Your capitalist of 1840 specu- 
lates on ^Change, has apartments on a second floor, goes to the play with 
an order, and marries his son to a rich bill-broker's daughter. 

The man of business, the money-agent of the good old times, was a bear 
that no art could tame. The modern stock-broker is an elegantly-dressed 
young man, who dines at the Cafe de Paris, and frequents the Opera. 

" Fifty thousand livres a year" was erst thought a princely fortune, and 
the possessor of such an income was never named without reverence ; but 
now, forsooth, fifty thousand francs per annum has become so common 
that they are spoken of with complete indifference. Of yore, there were 
partisans who, beginning life as servants, ended by becoming princes. 
Now there are bankers who commenced their career as princes, and close 
it in the capacity of servants. 

But now, as ever, ec ' to make a fortune 5 is so fine a phrase that it is in 
universal use ; it is to be found in all languages ; it tickles the ears even of 
foreigners and barbarians ; there is no sacred place into which it has not 
penetrated, no solitude in which it is unknown." 

It would therefore be the duty of the writer of the present day to 
describe the new roads to fortune : the Bank, the Exchange, advertise- 
ments, prospectuses, joint-stock companies, rises and falls, disasters and 
bankruptcies, the endless speculations on nothing and on the vacuum, and 
other legitimate fields of commerce which our fruitful century has reserved 
for itself — unwilling to lay itself open to the curse of ages to come. 

It has been said of the obsolete chapter on the Court that the race of 
the Great is extinct. True it is that Prince Talleyrand, the last gentleman 
of our eminently constitutional France, is no more. Therefore let us no 



INTRODUCTION. XV11 

longer look for the exclusive race of happy people who of necessity were 
the onlyrich and honourable men in the world — who alone were in possession 
of splendid furniture, a good table, and fine horses. But we have lost also 
the dwarfs, clowns, and jesters who amused them, and the flatterers who 
cajoled them. The race has become extinct, and in its place has arisen, 
armed with all its rights and powers, the Grande Nation of grocers. 

The Monied Man has succeeded the Great Lord. It is, now-a-days, the 
monied man who prides himself on opening a drive in a forest, on surrounding 
his park by a wall, on gilding his ceilings and cornices, on ornamenting his 
gardens with fountains and statues, and on building an orangery ; but our 
modern monied men, do they, any more than the great lords of a past 
century, strive who shall do most good ? — who shall be of most service to 
the necessitous poor? 

Our century has not what is vulgarly called great lords, but we have our 
great men. These latter are so happy, that in all their life they never have 
to put up with the least contradiction — at least so long as they bend to 
popular passion, whose humble slaves they are after all. They may be 
compared to a flag in skilful hands ; like the great men of the last age, 
ce they believe themselves alone to be perfect," and always stand on one 
foot, as changeable as-a weathercock. Their greatness, unfortunately, is not 
durable : called into existence by a trifle, the most insignificant trifle will 
destroy it, — a black ball at an election, or an article in a newspaper. 

These are, certainly, notable differences, which it was absolutely necessary 
to point out in our Pictures. With respect to the chapter on the Sove- 
reign, in La Bruyere's " Caracteres," which has long been the most 
striking specimen of political science, all attempts would fail to describe 
the profound abyss that separates it — written as it was near the Palace of 
Versailles — from the Charter of 1830. The Charter has, as it were by en- 
chantment, created among us an entirely new series of characters, of strange 
and incredible manners, of which past ages had not and could not have 
any idea, any more than at the present day we can. form an idea of the 
drawing-rooms of old Paris, in which all the moralists of the Augustan age 
of French literature, headed by La Bruyere and Moliere, sought their 
heroes — Tartufe, Celimene, M. Orgon, Alceste, M. Jourdain and his wife, 
Elise, Sganarelle, Valere, Marianne, Menalque the absent, Argyre the 
coquette, Gnaton the glutton, Ruffin the bon-vivant, Antagoras the 
litigious; the country squire, so useless to his country, his family, and 
himself; Adraste the licentious devotee, Triphile the bel-esprit. These 
and many more still exist, it is true, but modified and changed ; some less 
ridiculous, some more odious ; and we may read of human monstrosities 
that, fortunately, can no longer be seen among us. Take, for instance, the 
picture of the peasant of the seventeenth century : — " Certain wild bipeds, 

b 



XV111 INTRODUCTION. 

male and female, are seen scattered over the country, dark, freckled, and 
sunburnt, and strongly attached to the soil they cultivate ; their voice is 
nearly articulate, and, viewed in an erect posture, their face bears some 
resemblance to that of civilised man : in fact, they are of the genus homo !" 
Now-a-days, God be thanked, this animal no longer exists ; he has raised 
his head, and become a man indeed ; nay, the ambitious occasionally go 
to visit him — not in his burrow, but in his house, " to solicit the favour of 
his vote and interest." It is not long since an animal of this species was 
named chevalier of the Legion of Honour for inventing a new kind of 
plough. 

La Bruyere^s chapter on Fashion is one that has naturally suffered very 
little deterioration from age. It is the same with this everlasting subject 
as it is with the figures reflected by the Daguerreotype. Call the different 
views of a landscape, reproduced by the camera-obscura, the same, if you 
will; but as the aspect of nature resembles at no one hour that of a pre- 
ceding hour, so no one picture representing the same landscape will resemble 
views taken at an earlier or later hour in the day. In La Bruyere's time, 
butcherVmeat was out of fashion ; now-a-days, fashion, which patronizes 
all, would shrink from patronizing any kind of meat. Formerly, flori- 
culturists cultivated the tulip ; in 1840, the camellia alone is cultivated, 
while ten years ago, dahlias alone were esteemed by horticulturists 
superior to weeds : twenty years since, nothing went down but 
roses. The book-collector of the olden time had his house full of books, 
from cellar to garret ; his modern representative scrupulously chooses his 
books. But, in the main, they are still the same floriculturist, the same 
book-collector, the same antiquary, "whose ill-fed and worse-clothed 
daughters are not indulged in bed-furniture and clean linen f* the same 
bird-fancier, whose feathered songsters enliven every room of his house, but 
without making it smell like a stable ; the same entomologist, u the first 
man in the world for butterflies ;" the same duellist ; the same gamester ; 
the same eccentric character, who " gravely ponders overnight how he may 
the next day make himself most conspicuous." We also have our gallant 
gay magistrates, our grandiloquent barristers, our hired slanderers, 
our ragouts, our entremets, our cordials ; we have one Hermippe, who 
has carried the science of comfort and luxury in furnishing his mansion 
to such a length, that he has discovered a means of going up and down 
stairs without making use of the staircase ; we have our quack physicians, 
who now-a-days profess mesmerism and homoeopathy, instead of vending 
the universal elixir ; nor must we omit the astrologers and fortune-tellers 
of this prolific age — albeit our belief in the black art is not so strong as was 
La Bruyere's; — nor the wonderful revolutions of grammars and dictionaries, 
nor the unceasing succession of short-lived new words, which come in with 



INTRODUCTION. XIX 

the flowers, and disappear at the fall of the leaf. The eloquent preachers of 
the gospel, who used formerly to attract large congregations eager to listen 
to their impressive oratory, have disappeared ; but in return we have 
political discussions, and the embittered feelings spread from the rostrum 
among all classes of society. Now, as heretofore, men are the dupes of a 
public display of oratory. 

It must be confessed that the race of sceptical philosophers has become 
extinct. The man who, at the present day, should set up for an atheist 
and openly attempt to prove the non-existence of a Deity, would only be 
laughed at : time has been, when such a sophist would have excited terror, 
when ponderous quartos would have been written in refutation of his 
alarming theories. Though these professed champions of atheism have dis- 
appeared from among us, we have disciples of Robespierre, of Marat, and 
of Danton — honest young sansculottes who would not harm a fly, yet who 
boldly express their wish that all mankind had but one head, that they 
might knock it off with a single blow : we ought, therefore, to be indulgent 
in our strictures on the ancients, and bear in mind how much we shall 
need of indulgence at the hands of posterity. Let us not be too severe in 
our remarks upon the manners and customs of our ancestors, for the time 
will come when we shall be ancestors ourselves. With respect to manners, 
we are, perhaps, too distant from those who have gone before us, and are 
certainly too near our contemporaries to pass an impartial judgment upon 
them : let us therefore adopt all our predecessors* methods of describing the 
characters of their epoch, resorting to comedy and drama, to essay as 
well as to novel and romance. Even satire and personal abuse are not 
without their utility and value : those reprobates only are to be deprecated 
who, in the analysis of human life, use the poniard instead of the scalpel. 

Too much neglected in our days, in its legitimate department of the stage, 
comedy has found its way in all productions of art — in history, romance, 
song, and especially in painting. The painter has become moralist, and, 
seizing the happy moment, compelled his lively contemporaries to sit for 
their (i Pictures/ 5 Painters and writers have long separately followed this 
plan ; but hitherto the ingenious idea has riever struck them of blending their 
caustic satire, and combining their studies of character. At last, however, 
they have united in the great task of depicting the manners of their con- 
temporaries, and it was natural that such an association should produce the 
present work — a comedy of a hundred varied acts, with appropriate scenery, 
costume, and decorations. 

There are entire episodes of the national history of France, which, as far 
as private manners are concerned, are commemorated solely by pictures — 
more or less faithful : are not Boucher and Watteau, for instance, as much 
the historians of the manners and customs of the French people in the 



XX INTRODUCTION. 

eighteenth century, as Diderot and Crebillon the younger ? How charming, 
and above all how faithful a book might be produced by the united talents 
of a writer and a painter. Fancy a romance by Crebillon fils, illustrated 
by Watteau ! 

But however great a writer's talents — and we should be the last to 
undervalue them — however scrupulously exact his descriptions, the time 
is sure to come when certain parts of the pictures, so easily recognised by 
contemporaries, will be obliterated. The colour and fashion of garments 
change ; arms fall into disuse, and are replaced by other arms ; velvet 
supersedes wool, lace succeeds to velvet, iron is replaced by gold, squalid 
poverty makes way for wealthy luxury, Grecian for Gothic art, Athens for 
Rome, the age of Louis XIV. for the age of Louis XV. In a word, what- 
ever may be the difference between one period and another, how would it 
be possible for a single writer to catch and delineate all these passing 
shades ? It would be like imposing on one naturalist the task of describing 
the varied notes of all the feathered songsters of the woods. On reading 
the admirable chapters of old Theophrastus, who in his hundred and fiftieth 
year died complaining of the brief duration of human life, we are astonished 
to find depicted in his vigorous and caustic pages, with all the vigour of 
life, the whole of the Athenian people; who maybe there better studied than in 
Xenophon and Thucydides. But how great would be the reader's pleasure 
if he could behold the worthy Athenians clothed, housed, and fed, as in 
Theophrastus's time ! Would the student's pleasure be diminished if he 
could see, as they passed along the streets, all the honest citizens who un- 
consciously sat to the Grecian philosopher ? — the flatterer, the fault-finder, 
the rustic, the rogue, the chatterer, the tale-bearer, the miser, the brute, the 
blockhead, the coward, the coxcomb, the leading men of the republic ! How 
fortunate if these truthful descriptions had been handed down to us accom- 
panied by pictures of the originals from the life ! What interest would 
such illustrations have added to Theophrastus's text ! How much more 
vividly would he have appealed to our imagination ! 

But, Heaven help us, what the ancients neglected to do for us, we have 
done for posterity : they will have our " pictures" — not u heads," but full- 
lengths, and as ridiculous as the originals. Nothing has been forgotten in 
this magic-lantern in which we pass one another in review, not even to light 
the lamp — nothing has been neglected that could make the work a perfect 
picture of contemporary manners : in some sort working out the idea of our 
master La Bruyere, and handing down to our descendants the knowledge 
of our persons, habits, costumes, and tastes, as an acknowledgment of 
the benefits conferred upon us by similar information received at the hands 
of our fathers. 

Jules Janin. 




THE PARISIAN LADY. 



BY H. DE BALZAC. 




and exquisite blossom ! 



AS SING- along, in certain quarters of Paris, some fine 
morning between the hours of two and five, you observe a 
Lad j approaching. The first glance is like the preface to 
some charming book, — it presents to you a world of things 
graceful and elegant ! As the botanist detects among 
the hills and valleys some choice and unexpected prize, 
so you, amid Parisian vulgarities, have encountered a rare 
It is the Parisian Lady ! — the " Femme comme il faut." 
Either the ''cynosure" is accompanied by two distinguished-looking men, — one, 
at least, decorated with " an order : " or she is followed, at short distance, by a 
servant in undress livery. She wears no dazzling colours, no elaborately carved zone 
or buckle ; no embroidered flounce is seen waving over her instep ; on her feet are 
shoes of prunella, the sandals crossing a cotton stocking of exceeding fineness, or a 
plain silk one of soberest grey ; or else she wears a delicate boot of the simplest 
character. Her gown is of a stuff well chosen, but of no great cost ; yet its style 
and fashion shall attract you, and excite the envy of many a city-bred dame ; it is 
usually a wrapper, fastened with knots or bows, and prettily edged with a cord that 
is but slightly perceptible. She has a manner, all her own, of folding around her a 
cloak or shawl, which she arranges about her neck and shoulders with a sort of 
bridling curvet that would convert a bourgeoise into a hunchback, but which, in 
her, is made to indicate the most exquisite proportions of form — even in the very 
act of veiling them. But how is this done ? Ah ! that is her secret ; and she 
keeps it without requiring the protection of a patent. 

B 



Z THE PARISIAN LADY. 

Poets, artists, lovers ! all ye who worship Ideal Beauty, that mystic Rose of 
Genius happily unrevealed to the mere creatures of common life, — hover round and 
admire this flower of loveliness — at once so judiciously concealed, and so skilfully 
displayed ! The coquette ! — observe her ! Her walk is a kind of waving and har- 
monised motion, that makes her soft and dangerous form to quiver beneath its dra- 
peries, as at mid-day the serpent goes gliding through the trembling grass. Is it to 
a demon or an angel that she owes the graceful undulation, mantling beneath her 
long scarf of black silk, agitating the lace of its edge, and scattering around a breath 
of balm that I would fain call the Zephyrine of the " Parisienne " ? You perceive 
about her arms, waist, and throat, a display of " science in folds," that compels 
the most restive material into classic drapery, and reminds you of the antique 
Mnemosyne ! Ah ! how well she understands the eloquence of motion ! — Observe 
her manner of advancing the foot, and thus moulding her dress with so exact a propriety, 
that she excites an admiration — which dares be nothing warmer, only because restrained 
by the profoundest respect. An Englishwoman essaying such a step, has the air 
of a grenadier dashing forward to attack a redoubt. To the Parisian Lady be the 
honour and the glory of the perfect walk ! Yes, the civic power did well to accord 
her the smooth asphalte of the " trottoir " — it was her due ! Your bright Unknown 
displaces no passer-by ; but waits with a proud humility till all have made way ! The 
look of distinction peculiar to a highly-bred woman, is noted more especially in her 
mode of crossing her shawl or mantle over her bosom. She displays, even in walking, 
an air of serene self-possession that brings before you the Madonnas of Raphael in 
their frames. Her attitude — at once dignified and composed — compels the most inso- 
lent " dandy " to move out of her path. Her bonnet, of the simplest form, has the 
freshest ribands imaginable. Flowers, perhaps, or feathers ? No ! flowers invite too 
many gazers ; and feathers demand a carriage. Beneath this head-dress, you find the 
fresh and tranquil face of a woman self-assured, yet not to fatuity ; who looks at 
nothing, but sees everything ; whose vanity, half annihilated by repletion, has given to 
her expression a sort of indifference that piques one's curiosity ; she knows that all 
eyes follow her ; she knows that all, even of her own sex, will turn round to watch 
her steps. Thus she traverses Paris, a vestal shining in the purity — of her tact. 

But this beautiful genus loves only the warmest latitudes — the most select 
longitudes of Paris. You will find it between the 20th and the 116th arcade of the 
Rue Rivoli, under the line of the Boulevarts, from the glowing equator of the 
Panoramas, where flourish the productions of the Indies, where burst into blossom 
the most richly elaborated products of industry, even to the Cape of the Madeleine, 
or to those least impure lands of citizendom, between the numbers 30 and 150 of 
the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore. During the winter, she prefers the platform of 
the Feuillants to the pavement of bitumen that borders it. Ay, and this bird of 
beauty may also be seen floating along the avenue of the Champs Elysees, limited by 
the Place Louis Quinzc on the east, on the west by the avenue of Marigny, on the 
south by the Chaussee, and on the north by the gardens of the Faubourg St. Honore, 
but never in the hyperborean regions of the Rue St. Denis ; never in the Kamschatka 
of the commercial districts ; and in bad weather, you will find her — nowhere. These 
Parisian flowers bloom only for the morning hours ; then only do they perfume the 
promenades ; but five o'clock once passed, they fold up, as doth the lily of the day. 



THE PARISIAN LADY. O 

The women you see at a later hour, having a slight resemblance to those just de- 
scribed, and seeking to ape them in all things, are of sadly opposite habits and cha- 
racter, whilst the beautiful Unknown — your Beatrice of the day — is the true Parisian 
lady, the femme comme ilfaut. Strangers find it difficult to recognise the differences, 
by which our practised observers distinguish them, for woman is an admirable 
actress ; but the Parisian is not to be deceived ; — a fastening ill concealed — lacings 
showing their net-work through a yawning cleft in the back of the dress — shoes 
frayed, or ill-fitted — bonnet ribands just escaped from the smoothing-iron — a gown 
too much inflated — a " manner of being " — too stiffly starched ! You will observe an 
affected lowering of the eyes — a sort of studied conventionalism in the whole attitude. 

As to the city-bird, the Bourgeoise, it were impossible for us to confound her with 
the exquisite Parisian Lady ; she is an admirable foil to this enchantress," and 
explains clearly the charm that your Beatrice has thrown around you. The Bourgeoise 
has a busy look — she goes — she comes — she peers well about her — she trots to 
purpose — does not know exactly whether she will, or will not enter a shop. The 
Lady " comme il faut " knows perfectly what she desires, or will do. The Bourgeoise 
is undecided : she tucks up her gown to cross the gutters — nay, absolutely drags a 
child by the hand, which compels her to look out for the coaches. She parades her 
maternity to the public eye, and cordially chatters to her offspring. It is evident 
that she has money in her rush-made reticule, and transparent stockings are upon 
her feet ! In winter, she wears a boa over her fur tippet — in summer, both shawl 
and scarf. Your city dame is skilled to admiration in the redundancies of dress ! 

But your Beatrice — you will find her again (if you have the requisite qualifica- 
tion,) at " the Italians " — the opera — a ball — where she is seen under an aspect so 
different, that you would say — "Here are two creations without analogy." The 
woman has come forth from her vestments of mystery like a butterfly from its 
silken cone. She now serves up as a delicacy, to your enraptured eyes, those 
contours that in the morning the involutions of her drapery scarcely permitted you 
to divine. At the theatre, she will not be found beyond the second boxes, except 
at "the Italians ; " you may there study at your leisure the refined deliberation of 
her every movement. Adorable deceiver ! She makes use of a thousand little 
artifices of feminine policy, with an appearance of nature that excludes all idea of 
premeditation or art. Has she a royally beautiful hand ? The most astute observer 
shall believe it absolutely needful that she twist, remodel, put back, or move forward 
the very ringlet, or tress, she caresses or torments. It shall seem to you that she 
does but seek to infuse irony, or give grace to the remark just making to her neigh- 
bom- — while she is really taking the precise position for producing that magic effect 
of a half -vanishing profile so delighted in by great painters — the light reposing on the 
cheek — a clear line designating the nose, the delicate rose-tint of the illuminated and 
transparent nostril — the brow designed with a vivid keenness — the look of fire directed 
into the distance, while a beam of light points admirably the white roundness of the 
chin. If she have a pretty foot, she will throw herself on a divan with the coquetry 
of a cat in the sun, her feet peeping from beneath her drapery. Yet shall you find 
in her attitude as delicious a model as was ever given by Lassitude to the statuary ! 

It is only the Parisian "Lady" who displays perfect ease in her dress. She 
suffers nothing to constrain her. You never can surprise her, as you might the 



J THE PARISIAN LADY. 

Bourgeoise, arranging a disorderly epaulette — compelling obedience from a rebellious 

girdle — observing if the tucker continues a faithful guardian to its trust — or con- 
sulting a glass as to the arrangement of her hair. Her toilette is in perfect keeping 

with her character : she has had time to study it, and decide on what becomes her ; 
what does not become her she has known long, and well. 

To be a woman of this exquisite fashion does not require great talent, but it does 
require great taste. Your fair one always disappears before the conclusion of 
the performance ; if by chance she shows herself on the red steps of the stair- 
case, she is then a prey to some violent emotion ; she is there for a purpose ; she 
has some stealthy look to give, some "promise to receive ; perhaps she descends thus 
slowly to satisfy the vanity of some slave— whom she sometimes obeys in her turn. 
If your meeting be at a ball or evening party, your ear will eagerly and rapidly 
gather the sweetness, real or affected, of her skilfully modulated voice : you will be 
delighted with every word — " signifying nothing," perhaps, but to which she com- 
municates the efficacy of deep thought by a skill inimitable : the mind of this 
woman is the triumph of an art entirely plastic ; you know nothing, you retain 
nothing, exactly, of all that she says ; but you shall be charmed, — spellbound, never- 
theless. She shakes her head, shrugs gracefully her ivory shoulders, gilds the most 
insignificant phrase by an incipient smile or pretty pout, and utters an epigram of 
Voltaire's with a gesture — an " ah ! " — or a " there " " and then ! " An air of the 
head becomes the most active interrogation— there is eloquence in the movement that 
balances her Cassolette as it hangs by a ring to her finger ; it is the artificially great, 
resulting from the superlatively small : she drops her hand with a noble grace, 
suspending it from the arm of her chair, where it hangs like a dewdrop on the edge 

. of a flower, — and behold ! — all is said ! — she has pronounced a judgment, from 
which there is no appeal, and which might animate the most insensible. She 
listens to you ; she affords you opportunity for being spirituel — and I appeal to 
your modesty, are not such occasions rare ? In her presence you are shocked by 
no inharmonious thought, while you cannot talk for half an hour with a " Bourgeoise," 
but she will bring her spouse before you in one form or another. Should your 
Beatrice be married, she has the delicacy so closely to veil her husband, that the 
scrutiny of a Columbus would not discover him ; unassisted you could never do it. 
But you may observe her, towards the close of the evening, looking fixedly at 
some distinguished person of middle age : her carriage is ordered — she departs ; 
and you bear to your pillow the golden fragments of a delicious dream, that will 
probably continue when the heavy hand of sleep shall have opened the ivory door of 
Fancy's temple. 

At home, this creature of bright imaginings is not visible, on her receiving days, 
until four. She has the prudence to make you wait. In her house everything is 
in the best taste, — the very staircase breathes a cordial warmth, habits of luxury 
pervade her every moment, and are refreshed with unerring judgment. The costly 
trifles of the day arc scattered in profusion, but seek not to compete with a museum 
of curiosities. No object of beauty is obscured by glass, cases of glass, or 
odious envelopes affixed by way of safeguard. Bright flowers rejoice the eyes on 
every side, — flowers, the only present she accepts — nor this, but from the selected 
few : floAvcrs live not beyond the day, give pleasure, and require to bo renewed ; 



THE PARISIAN LADY. 5 

these are to her, as they are in the East, a symbol and a promise. You will find 
her at her fireside seated on her causeuse, from whence she salutes you without rising : 
her conversation is no longer that of the ball ; there it was your duty to amuse her — 
in her own house, it is her affair that you be entertained. How delicate are these 
shades ; — the Parisian Lady comprehends them to perfection. 

She values you as one who is to increase her circle of society, — a paramount 
object of solicitude with her : thus to fix you in her drawing-room she will exert a 
thousand wiles — it is in her own house that you feel how completely isolated is the 
woman of our day, and why it is that each desires to be the sun of her sphere — the 
one luminary of the world she lives for. Conversation is an impossibility without 
generalities ; the epigram — that volume in a word — no longer turns, as it did in the 
18th century, on persons or things, but on the most trifling events, and it perishes 
with the moment of its birth. The talent of the Parisian Lady, if she have anv. 
consists in throwing doubts on all things, while that of the Bourgeoise is to 
support and maintain them ; this constitutes one great distinction between these 
two women. The Bourgeoise is unquestionably virtuous, The Parisian Lady 
is not sure that she is so, either in reference to the present or the future ; she 
hesitates and resists, precisely where the other refuses — this indecision, as to all 
and everything, is one of the last graces which the existing state of society has left 
her. She goes rarely to church, but will talk to you of religion, and even seek 
to convert you, should you indulge in fashionable incredulity, for you will thus 
have given occasion to those pretty airs, those graceful gestures, those formal 
phrases, so delightful in every woman. " Ah! shame on you! I thought you too high- 
minded to attack religion ! — what ! you see society crumbling around us, and would 
remove its latest prop ; but do you not perceive that religion, in these days, is our 
all — nay, our very selves — it is you — us, — our property, and the future existence of 
our children. Ah ! do not let us be egotists ! Selfishness is the vice of the age, 
and religion is its only corrective ; it is that alone which unites those whom your 
laws tend to separate." Such will be her exclamations. She will enter on a serio- 
polemical homily, well sprinkled with political notions, and neither Catholic nor 
Protestant, but moral ! oh, supremely moral ! and you shall find it a perfect specimen 
of tissue, woven out of all the various modern doctrines, however opposed and irre- 
concilable they may be. Her lecture will manifest that she represents no less the 
confusion Intellectual, than the confusion Political of the day, just as she is 
surrounded externally by the brilliant but fragile products of an industry, ever 
busied in destroying its own works for the sole purpose of reproducing them. You 
leave her, saying to yourself, " She certainly has superiority of mind ! " — and you 
think this all the more, because she has sounded the depths of your own heart 
with a most tender and delicate plummet. She has fathomed your secrets by 
appearing ignorant that she can learn them ; but there are some things she never 
knows, however profoundly she may be acquainted with them. One thought alone 
disturbs you — you know nothing of her heart ! The " great ladies " of old times 
threw no veils over the features of their lovers — they were posted up — announced, — 
universally known: but now-a-days, "the Lady" has her "preference" — ruled 
like music paper, with its minims, crotchets, quavers, sharps, flats, organ stops, 
and what not. Weak woman ! she sports with the lightning ! she will compromise 



b THE PARISIAN LADY. 

neither her husband nor the welfare of her children — but neither will she give up 
her lover ! — In our age, name and station are no longer held in respect sufficient 
to shelter those they dignify. The whole body of the Aristocracy will not now stand 
forward as a screen for the woman who has erred. " La femme comme il faut" 
cannot, like the " great lady" of by-gone days, march on by main force : she can 
trample no one under foot — it is herself who may be trampled on : hence she becomes 
a combination of Jesuitical half-measures, and most ambiguous distinctions : care- 
fully guarding all outward proprieties, she steers her slight bark among the breakers 
— the breath of the passions stealing none the less through her sails. This woman, 
so unfettered in the ball-room, so attractive on the promenade, is a slave in her 
home, and possesses independence only in her closet or her thoughts : she desires 
to be considered a model of propriety, and to seem so is her perpetual study ; — 
she dreads her servants as an Englishwoman fears Doctors' Commons ; for a woman 
now-a-days, if separated from her husband, may be reduced to some trifling annuity, 
and then, divested of all luxury, without a carriage, a box at the opera, or the deify- 
ing accessories of the toilette, she has no longer place or position — she becomes a 
nobody — a mere non-entity. 

The Lady, therefore, may give occasion to many whispers, but never to open 
condemnation. She is something between English hypocrisy and the graceful 
frankness of the 18th century. She forms part of a false system, that indicates a 
period when nothing which follows resembles that which departs, and the transitions 
of which lead to no results ; wherein all striking features are effaced, slight shades 
alone remain, and all distinctions are purely personal. In my opinion, it were impos- 
sible that any woman, were she next of kin to the very throne, should acquire, before 
her 25th year, that universal knowledge of nothings, that science of contrivances, 
those important trifles — great little things — those serpentine inflexions of voice, 
those harmonies of colour, those angelic devilries, those innocent villanies, the 
eloquence and silence, the seriousness and bantering, the tact and stupidity, the 
refined policy and unconscious ignorance which constitute "la femme comme il faut." 
Certain indiscreet persons have asked us if a literary lady be a lady "comme il 
faut"? If she have genius — yes, possibly : if not — she is then a lady such as — we 
must decline to describe. 

And now what is this woman ? — whence comes she ? — to what family does she 
belong ? We reply, she must take the position which the revolution has given to 
her ; she is essentially a modern creation, a triumph of the elective system, applied 
to the fair sex. Each revolution has its pass-word, a word by which it depicts itself, 
and wherein its spirit is made manifest ; to explain certain words, added from age to 
age to the French language, would be to write a magnificent history : " organise," 
for example, is a word of the Empire, — it is Napoleon concentrated ! For nearly 
half a century we have been aiding and assisting the ruin of all social distinctions ; 
we ought to have saved our women from this prodigious wreck ; but the Civil Code 
has crushed them, too, in its progress! — The "Great Lady" — is dead ; she lias 
expired with her gorgeous solemnities of the past century — her powder, patches, 
high-heeled shoes, and well-stiffened stays, all bedizened with bows. A Duchess 
goes now through all doors without having any one of them enlarged for the passage 
of her hoop ; in short, the Empire saw the last of the " long- trained gowns." I have 



THE PARISIAN LADY. 



yet to learn why the Sovereign, who chose to see his court swept by satins and 
velvets, did not establish, by some irrevocable law, the right of primogeniture for, at 
least, certain families. Napoleon did not foresee the application of the code he so 
o-loried in — in creating Duchesses, he gave birth only to our "fenrmes comme il 
f au t : " — they resulted from his legislation, and maybe called its " mediate product." 
The splendours of the social state have been demolished. Now-a-days, every booby 
who is competent to carry a head upright above his collar, to cover his broad 
chest with half an ell of satin by way of cuirass, display a brow with certain 
suspicious sigDS of apocryphal genius beneath curling locks, balance himself on 
shining pumps, surmounted by silk stockings at five shillings a pair, and hold his 
eye-glass between a frontal arch and distorted cheek, though he be a lawyer's clerk, 
the heir of a contractor, or a banker's son (with the bend sinister on his shield), may 
yet stare impertinently at the loveliest Duchess. 

But what are the causes of this state of things ? Let us see. A Duke of — what 
you please — under Louis XVIII. or Charles X., with 200,000 francs a year, a 
magnificent hotel and well-appointed household, might be still an important personage 
— (the last of these great French nobles, the Prince de Talleyrand, has just died.) 
This duke leaves four children, of whom two are daughters ; — now, supposing all 
were married, neither of his heirs has more than 100,000 francs a year : each is the 
parent of several children, consequently is obliged to live in a mere " apartment " on 
the ground or first floor of some house, and that with the closest economy, or is even 
occupied, perhaps, in seeking " a fortune." Henceforward the wife of the eldest son 
is Duchess only in name, — she has neither equipage, servants, opera box, nor even 
leisure — for she nurses her babies, buys their dear little stockings, and educates her 
daughters, whom she no longer sends to a convent. The most noble among our 
women is thus become a respectable housewife — she is buried as completely in the 
duties of her married life, as the woman of the Rue St. Denis in her shop affairs — 
our era has none of the beautiful flowers of womankind which adorned the " great 
ages." The fan of the " great lady " is broken ; it is not now, as it once was, the 
efficient auxiliary of the Graces, because Woman has half laid aside her airs ; she has 
not now to bridle, blush, whisper, advance, or retire, as a kind of " parade exercise " 
necessary to be gone through : no — the fan is used but to agitate the air ; and when 
a thing becomes applicable only to a purpose for which it was intended, it is too 
useful to be any longer a luxury. 

All things in France have thus conspired to give influence to our " femme comme 
il faut." The aristocracy assented to her government by retiring to their distant 
seats, where they hide themselves to die. The women who might have moulded the 
manners of Europe — commanded opinion and fitted it as their glove — ruled the world 
by governing its rulers — the men of resource, — of thought, — they have committed 
the error of abandoning the field, because ashamed at having to contend with the 
middle classes, who, intoxicated with power, have thrown themselves into the arena 
to be torn in pieces, perhaps, by the brute multitude that is following rapidly in their 
steps. Thus, when the citizen goes to look at a princess, he perceives only a young- 
person "comme il faut." No prince can, now-a-days, find "great ladies" to com- 
promise ; he cannot now render illustrious the object of his choice ; the Duke de 
Bourbon was the last who attempted to exert this privilege, and heaven only knows 



O THE PARISIAN LADY. 

what it cost him. In these dreary times even princes themselves must be content 
with — " des femmes comme il faut " — each holding her opera box, merely in common 
with some half a dozen friends, and whom royal favour does not elevate a hair's 
breadth. No ; she glides along silently between the stream of the noble and the city- 
born, neither altogether the one, nor yet wholly of the other. 

The Press has taken the place of the Woman ; it has become heir to that which 
was hers. She is no longer the speaking oracle ! fair medium of delicious slanders 
in drapery of silken words. We have now Written Diaries, and these in a patois 
changing every third year, — gazettes, graceful as an ourang-outang, amusing as a 
death's head, and light as the lead of their types. French conversations are now 
made in revolutionary Iroquois from one end of France to the other, by long columns 
printed in ancient mansions, where the press groans and gnashes its teeth in halls, 
once hallowed by the brightest forms, and consecrated by discourse the most brilliant. 

The knell of high society is sounding ! Do you hear it ? — the first stroke is the 
modern phrase of ''La femme comme il faut ;" — this woman, proceeding from the 
ranks of nobility, or put forward by the Bourgeoisie, coming indifferently from all 
parts, capital or province, is the type of the actual time — a last image of good taste, 
talent, grace, and distinction united, but all lessened and degenerated. We shall see 
no more " great ladies " in France, but there will long exist " des femmes comme il 
faut," sent by public opinion into a feminine Chamber of Peers, and which will be 
for the fair sex what the distinction of " Gentleman" is in England. And this is 
progress ! Formerly, a woman might have the voice of a fish- seller, the stride of a 
grenadier, the brow of the boldest courtezan, a thick and heavy hand, and the foot 
of an elephant, — she was none the less a " Great Lady " — but now, were she a 
Montmorency (if the daughter of a Montmorency could be so degenerate,) she would 
be no longer " une femme comme il faut." 





, >$**s>>^^ 



THE PARISIAN GROCER. 




THE GROCER* 



BY H. DE BALZAC. 




i EVOLD of feeling and gratitude must they be, who pass 
with indifference before the sacred threshold of a Grocer's 
door. Be the slouched-capped boy of the establishment 
ever so dirty and hideous, — be the jolly master ever so 
fresh and rosy, I regard them both with solicitude, and 
I treat them with the same respect as is entertained towards 
} their class by the Constitutionnel. I pass a king, or a 
bishop, or a funeral in the street, without the least notice ; but a Grocer, never. 
I fancy our French Grocer, whose dynasty is at most but a hundred years old, to be 
one of the best types of modern society. How resigned is he under unmerited 
wrong ! — how great in usefulness and benefits ! — what good things do we owe to 
him ! — what light springs from him ! — what sweetness in him has its source ! Is he 

* The French Grocer (Epicier) is not exactly the counterpart of the English Grocer : he com- 
bines what is here called the " oil and Italian business " with the grocer's and tallowchandler's. 

There are a few allusions in this witty diatribe of M. de Balzac, which are not quite intelligible 
to the English reader ; but the following passage from No. 4 of the London Review, 1836, will 
explain, in few words, the most prominent points of the satire : — 

" Since the Restoration, the Grocer has become the type of a class of men very widely diffused 
in France. There are coarse and narrow understandings which have neither the creed and feelings 
of the past, nor those of the future, and which maintain a fixed middle point amid the movement 
of ideas ; this is what we call VEsprit Epicier, applied to literature, to the arts, to the mode of 
living, and manifesting itself in manner, style, and taste, by something obsolete, vulgar, and awk- 
ward, tinged with the ridiculous ; this spirit has created what we call le Genre Epicier" The 
Constitutionnel represents the opinions of this class. — Ed. 

C 



10 THE GROCER. 

not the American envoy, the Indian ambassador, the African plenipotentiary ? — all 
this is he ; and, best of all — without knowing anything about it. — Does the Obelisk 
know it is a monument ? 

Laughing is mighty well, but think first at whom ! Did you ever go into a 
Grocer's shop without a gracious smile and a doffing of the hat, while you kept 
your beaver on ? The butcher is rude : the baker pale and sulky : the Grocer 
alone, always anxious to oblige, shows in all quarters of Paris a smiling face. 
And to whom therefore does the foot-passenger apply in his perplexity ? Does he 
tax the science of the crabbed watchmaker ? — does he resort to the counter, where, 
guarded by bastions of bleeding meat, sits enthroned the rosy butcher's lady ? — does 
he attack the baker behind his protective railing ? — not them does he seek, but the 
Grocer. There he gets his small change and learns his way : he is sure of this man 
— the most christian of all tradesmen, although the most laborious — stealing time 
from himself to give it to the passer-by. Never mind how you disturb him, or what 
contributions you would levy on him : he is sure to greet you with a bow — nay, 
if the conversation passes mere question and answer, and grows confidential, the 
Grocer will show much interest about you. It is more easy, in Paris, to find 
a woman with a bad figure than a grocer without politeness. Recollect this as 
an axiom ; the Grocer is the victim of many strange calumnies, against which you 
can set it. 

There are men, who, from a pinnacle of false grandeur, — or of an intellect that 
has grown squeamish and hard to please, — or of a very fine artistically-cut beard and 
whiskers, look down and cry raca on the Grocer. They have made his name to 
stand for a proverb, a class, a system, an opinion, a figure as European and ency- 
clopsedian as his shop. To express a whole series of insults at once, they cry out 
to a man, " You are a Grocer." Let us have done with these Diocletians of Grocery. 
Why do you blame a Grocer ? Is it because he has chocolate-coloured, coffee- 
coloured, or green-tea-coloured breeches ? — because he wears blue stockings in slip- 
pers ? — because the tassel that dangles from his sealskin cap is of dirty green silver 
or of dingy black gold — because the triangular tail of his apron reposes on the 
region of his midriff ? Is it this you find fault with, democrats that you are, and 
ant-like children of labour — for this, which is the praiseworthy emblem of labour ? Is 
it because a Grocer is supposed to know nothing about arts, or literature, or 
politics ? Who is it, pray, that has swallowed up the editions of Voltaire and 
Rousseau ? — who buys the pictures of Dubufe ? — who holds in reverence the Legion of 
Honour ? — who cries at the melodrama ? — who takes shares in impossible companies ? 
— who reads Paul de Kock ? — who caused the triumph of the Postilion de Lon- 
jumcau ? — who goes to and admires the museum at Versailles ? — who buys gilt 
clocks, with Mamelukes on the top weeping over their chargers ? — who is it that 
votes for the candidates of the opposition, and at the same time supports the 
strongest measures of the government ? — the Grocer, the Grocer, I say — the Grocer. 
At the threshold of all emergencies, be they ever so perplexing, you find him ready 
and watchful, just as he is at his own door ; he does not comprehend everything, 
but he supports everything by his labour, by his silence, by his energy and by his 
money ! If wc are not at this moment savages, Spaniards, or Saint Simonians, 
thank the noble army of Grocers : for it has maintained all things. Perhaps it 



THE GROCER. 11 

would maintain one system as well as another, Republicans, Imperialists, Bour- 
bonists, Louis-Philippists, all the same. "To maintain," is the Grocer's motto: 
if he did not maintain some social system, to whom would he sell ? In a great 
crisis the Grocer is the representative of the consecrated opinion : he advances or he 
draws back, he speaks or he is silent. In all established humbugs, what a noble belief 
he has ! Prevent him, if you can, from crowding to see the picture of Jane Grey, 
from subscribing for General Foy's children, from insisting on the restoration of 
Napoleon's ashes, from swearing by asphaltum, from dressing out his little son 
like a Polish lancer or a national guard, as the case may be : prevent him, if you 
can, all you bragging journals, you who bend pen and press to do him honour, 
you who smile on him, and in your newspaper traps put all sorts of baits to 
catch Grocers. 

He is one of the bowels of society : we have not paid him sufficient attention ; — 
the ancients would have deified him. You are a speculator, say, and have built a 
street, or perhaps a village. You find some sort of inhabitants ; you have caught 
hold of a schoolmaster, and hope for children ; and your something begins to wear 
a civilised look with it. Just as you make a pudding : you have plums, and suet, 
and treacle, and flour ; you have got together a parson, a clerk, a beadle, a town- 
crier : it won't hold — all this little globe that you have been kneading will melt 
away into a mash without the Grocer ; he is the strongest of all common ties — 
a social pudding-cloth. Unless you place a Grocer's shop in the high street, just 
as you have placed a cross on the steeple, you will have a deserted village. Bread, 
meat, tailors, shoes, clergymen, government, and their like, may come or go by 
post or by coach : but a Grocer must be there, must stay there, the first up, and 
the last abed : his shop perpetually open, to gossip in, to higgle in, to talk in ; 
without him there would be none of the luxuries of modern society, unknown to the 
ancients, as were tea, brandy, tobacco, and sugar. For every want the Grocer 
will supply you with a triple satisfaction : he has tea, coffee, and chocolate, the 
beginning and end of all breakfasts : wax, tallow, and oil, the source of all lights : 
salt, pepper, and nutmeg, which are the rhetoric of the kitchen ; sugar, syrups, 
and jams, that sweeten the cup of our existence ; cheese, almonds, and raisius, 
without which what man could get his dessert ? But why carry further the 
grocerial trilogies ? — they embrace all the wants of life — -is not the man himself 
a trilogy ? — he is a juryman, an elector, a national guard. I don't know whether 
those who swear at him have under their left breasts a lump of stone ; but, for 
my part, I never can look at his jar of marbles without thinking of the part 
he played in my youth. Ah ! what a place does that man occupy in the hearts of 
little rogues to whom he sells tops, kite-strings, stick-liquorice, and barley-sugar ! 
He tracks our whole existence, this man ! — he has a taper in his drawer to 
shine at your funeral, and a tear in his eye for your memory. He sells pens and ink 
to poets, colours to painters, and paste to everybody. If a gambler has lost every- 
thing, the Grocer will sell him shot, powder, and poison ; if he would win back his 
losses, our friend will sell him cards. Is your cousin Mary coming to tea with 
you ? — you can't entertain her without the Grocer s aid : does she stain her dress ? — 
who sells starch, soap, and soda, but the Grocer ? If, on some sleepless night, you 
cry for light, lo ! at hand is the Grocer's phosphorus-box : if you trip it on light 



12 THE GROCER. 

fantastic toe, look down, — you see his blacking in your pumps. He has Cognac for 
soldiers, and eau de Cologne for ladies ; to the old pensioner he sells the eternal 
snuff, performing its incessant circulation through snuff-box, nose, and handker- 
chief, making the nose of an inveterate snuff-taker as much an emblem of infinity as 
the serpent with its tail in its mouth. The Grocer sells drugs that will cause your 
death, and substances which will bring you to life. He has sold himself to the 
public, as a witch to Satan, and is of our social state the end and beginning. 
Not a step nor a league ; not a crime nor a good action ; not a day's work, nor a 
day's pleasure ; not a mistress nor a friend, can be moved, done, passed, or helped, 
without the Grocer. He is Civilisation behind a counter, Society in whitey-brown 
paper, Necessity armed from head to feet, — Life itself distributed into drawers, boxes, 
and canisters. We have heard some one prefer a Grocer's patronage to that of a 
king ; for a king kills, a Grocer gives life. Be abandoned by everybody, — by your 
creditors, and even yoiu* mother ; if you have a Grocer for a friend, you will live in 
his house as jolly as a mouse in a cheese. 

By what fatality then has this pivot of society, this tranquil instance of practical 
philosophy, this perpetual industry, — by what fatality has the Grocer been pitched 
on to stand as the type of stupidity ? What virtues does he not possess ? — he 
possesses all, all. Have you ever seen the National Guard turn out, to welcome 
the illustrious living, to follow the illustrious dead — to the tomb or to the palace ? — 
who are those who march ? Long, glorious, waving lines of Grocers. As for their 
constancy, it is fabulous ; there is not one of these men but cheerfully cuts off his 
ears daily with his shirt-collars : there is not one of them but gaily goes through, 
from day to day, the same series of jokes with his customers. To see the sympathy 
with which he takes the "last twopence from the widow or the orphan, is enough to 
break your heart ; — to see his modesty in the presence of his betters, is enough to 
make one proud of human nature ! 

Suppose that the Grocers refused any longer to become peers of France or depu- 
ties ; suppose they declined to illuminate on public days ; to give directions to 
bewildered wanderers, coppers to beggars, and a glass of wine to the woman who 
has been taken ill at the corner of the street, (even without knowing her character). 
Suppose the Grocer left off reading the Constitntionnel ; suppose he made a joke of 
the Legion d'Honneur and took to reading the books he purchased for waste paper ; 
went abroad with the schoolmaster, vowed the National Guard was a humbug, 
pretended to love music, and to understand metaphysics ; suppose he did all this — 
we should despise him ; he would then deserve to be the butt of caricaturists, the 
object of satire, the wretched puppet of the hour. But he does none of these 
things. Look at him, oh ! my fellow-countrymen ; and what do you sec in him ? a 
man for the most part short, commonly punchy, ordinarily with a considerable stomach 
— a good father, husband, master. 

Stop at the word master. If there be happiness in the world, the Grocer's boy 
represents it. A little Grocer's boy hath a red face and a blue apron, and beyond 
this, nothing. His joy is to dawdle on the shop-step, and ogle she-passengers in 
the street, lie jokes with customers, he admires his mistress, he is happy with a 
ticket to the play : his master he considers to be a mighty man, and longs for the 
day when he, like Mr. Grocer, shall shave his chin in the round looking-glass, and. 



THE GROCER. 13 

like him, shall have a wife to air his shirts and neckcloth, and lay out his pantaloons. 
To turn shepherd and live in Arcadia, as Poussin would have it, is a mere joke. 
The Grocer's happiness is one of the most enviable of the world. 

Rogues of the pen and pencil, who sneer at Genius and Grocers alike, let us 
admit that a certain little round belly does distinguish the latter, and may give occa- 
sion to a little satire. Yes, truly, it must he admitted, that at reviews, when the 
National Guards present arms, the Grocers present likewise a stomachic bulge, 
which perhaps deranges the symmetry of the line. Of this waviness we have heard 
puffy colonels bitterly complain. But who ever heard of a thin or a pale Grocer ? 
Such a man would be dishonoured. Would you have a Grocer passionate or romantic ? 
No : they have, once for all — bellies. Louis XVIII. had one — Napoleon had one. 
Here are two noble instances ; quarrel not with the Grocer for his. Consider how 
much more readily he will open his books to you than your friends will their 
purses, and pardon him this defect, if it be one ; if Grocers were not subject 
to become bankrupts, they would be the types of the good, the useful, and the 
beautiful. 

They have a fault, perhaps, in the eyes of delicate persons ; — they will love a small 
country-house ten miles from Paris, with 20 perches of garden : they will have yellow 
calico window-curtains and carved plush-bottomed chairs. Their diamond shirt-pins 
too, and the wedding-rings which they wear, are perhaps ridiculous : but pray 
remember, the one betokens a man of property, whilst the other signifies marriage, 
and no one ever thought of a Grocer yet without a wife. Even she, poor thing, has 
been dragged down into our satirical hell. They say, that since the Revolution the 
Grocer's wife gives herself airs, and wants to go to court. And why not ? What 
woman, seated all day at a counter, has not sometimes a longing to leave it ? Why 
should not citizens gather round citizen kings ? And whither should virtue betake 
itself but to the neighbourhood of the throne ? We say virtue, — for the Grocer's 
wife is virtuous. Rarely does conjugal unfaithfulness afflict him. His lady has 
neither will to betray him, nor occasion : betwixt the counter and him her hours 
are passed, and her love for both is so absorbing, that her flesh disappears, as 
you will have remarked — her soul wears away her body, and Grocers' wives are 
universally thin. Just take a cab, and, driving through all Paris, look at these 
ladies ; they are all meagre, pale, yellow, weazened. Medicine has opined, that from 
colonial produce rise certain noxious exhalations, which cause this wasting of the 
frame. Pathology has hinted, that long sessions at the counter, perpetual watchful- 
ness, chattering, and movement of the arms, are hurtful ; and street-doors eternally 
wide open, occasion cold and elicit redness of the. nose. However this may be, true 
it is, that the Grocer's lady is faithful, and that nowhere is Hymen more honoured 
than by those of her class. 

A Grocer, wherever you may chance to meet him, never says bluntly and 
coarsely " my wife," mafemme, — he speaks of her as " my good lad} 7 ," mon epouse. 
" My wife," is a vile, coarse, crude, vulgar, slip-slop, low-life term, and changes a 
divine creature at once into a common thing. Savages have wives : civilised beings 
have their spouses, " epouses" or good ladies. When, therefore, the Grocer goes 
abroad with his partner, you may see in his port the consideration with which 
he regards her, and as such a respect is unusual, the caricaturists never fail to 



14 THE GROCER. 

be at his heels. He seems so happy to quit his shop ; his lady so seldom makes 
what we call a toilette ; her clothes are so stiff, and stick out so, that a Grocer, 
ornamented with his wife, occupies more room on the public way than any other 
couple. He has taken off his cap and his round jacket, and you would scarcely 
know him from any common individual, but for the words "ma bonne amie," 
which, in explaining the alterations in the town, he addresses to his lady, who stirs 
out so seldom, as not to know the new improvements of the capital. Sometimes, 
of holidays, he even ventures on a country excursion, on which occasion he seats 
himself in the most dusty part of the woods of Auteuil or Vincennes, and swears 
by the freshness of the air. There, as everywhere, do you know him under all 
disguises, by the peculiarity of his phraseology and his opinions. You are going 
by the coach to Melun, or Orleans : you find yourself opposite a decent man, 
who examines you with a suspicious air, and you lose yourself in conjecture 
regarding this silent individual. Is he a lawyer ? Is he a Peer of France ? 
What is he ? A lady begins to speak ; she is ill — not yet recovered, she says, 
from the cholera. The conversation is begun ; the Unknown opens his mouth to 
speak, and says — 

" Mosieu " — you know him at once : it is the Grocer. A Grocer does not say 
Monsieur, which is affected : nor Msieu, which is infinitely contemptuous — Mosieu 
is the very term : it is between respect and protection, expresses consideration, and 
gives to the sentence a pleasant, melodious twang. "Mosieu," says he, "during 
the cholera, the three great doctors of Paris, Dupuytren, Broussais, and Mosieu 
Majendie, treated their patients with different remedies : almost all died. They 
did not know what the cholera was, Sir ; — the cholera, Sir, is a disease of which 
people die. That was a bad time, Sir, for trade, the time of the cholera, — a bad 
time, Sir." 

You then try him upon politics. His politics are simply these : " Mosieu — these 
ministers don't seem to know what they are about. There 's no use in changing 
them — it 's always the same thing. It was only under the Emperor that they did 
their business : but then, what a man, Sir ! What a loss had France in losing him, 
Sir ! To think of their not standing by him ! " 

You will then discover that the Grocer's religious opinions are extremely repre- 
hensible. For him, Beranger's Songs are as Holy Writ. Yes, these detestable 
" refrains," adulterated with politics, have done mischief which will long be felt by 
Grocery. A hundred years will, perhaps, elapse before a Grocer of Paris (those in the 
country are less possessed by the spirit of Song) enters Paradise. 

If the journey were a short one, and the Grocer did not speak, — a rare case, — 
you would recognise him by the manner in which he blew his nose. He puts one 
corner of his handkerchief between his teeth, holds it up by the middle like a pair of 
scales, takes a magisterial grasp of his nose, and winds such a flourish as would make 
a key-bugle jealous. 

Some of those people who have a mania for diving into everything, have dis- 
covered one great disadvantage in the Grocer. He retires, they say. When he 
has retired, no soul can find any use in him. What does lie do ? What becomes 
of him ? His distinctive marks disappear, and we arc interested in him no more. 
You never hear of a Grocer's son, as his defenders proudly assert, becoming a painter 



THE GROCER. 15 

or a journalist ; he is either a notary or an attorney, and thus the father Grocer is 
authorised to say, " I have paid my debt to my country." Should he have no son, 
the Grocer has a successor in whose fate he takes an interest : he encourages him : 
he comes daily to examine the amount of sales, or his books, and to compare them 
with the sales of his time. He advances him money, and, by the thread of discount, 
still hangs on to Grocery. Who does not know that touching anecdote of which a 
Grocer is the hero ? 

One of the old school, who, thirty years long, had breathed the thousand odours 
of his own floor, — had descended the stream of life in company with myriads of 
herrings, and floated down cheek-by-jowl with an infinity of cods, — had swept away 
the periodical mud of a hundred early customers, and handled a store of good large 
greasy coppers ; one of these Grocers, finding himself rich beyond his desires, having 
buried his wife snugly, and having the receipts of the cemetery-company filed and 
docketed regularly among his family papers, sold his business, and was free. The 
first day he walked about Paris like a gentleman ; looked at the people playing 
dominoes in the cafes, and even went to the play. But he was uncomfortable : he 
prowled about the Grocers' shops, and listened to the braying of the pestle in the 
mortar ; and in spite of himself, when he saw a Grocer standing at his shop-door 
and taking the air, he said in his heart, " Thou wast once like him." Overcome 
by the magnetism of Grocery, he went to visit his successor. All things went well, 
and our friend returned home with a heavy heart. " /'m all over something," said 
he to the Doctor in consulting him ; and the Doctor ordered him to travel, without 
positively mentioning Switzerland or Italy. He did travel : after several long 
journeys to Saint Germain, to Montmorency, to Vincennes, the poor Grocer, falling 
away daily, could hold no more, but returned to his shop as the dove to his nest, 
repeating his famous proverb, "/ am like the ivy, I die where I attach myself '." 
He got leave from his successor to make paper bags in the corner, and occasionally 
to replace him at the counter. That eye, which had become like the orb of a boiled 
cod, is now once more lighted again with gleams of pleasure. Of an evening^ 
you may see him at the coffee-house at the corner, where he mourns the present 
decaying state of the Grocers. Quackery, he says, has penetrated even amongst 
them ; and what the deuce do they want with these fine machines for grinding 
chocolate ? 

Many Grocers, the cleverest among them, when retired into the country, become 
mayors of small villages, and thus cast over the country the graces of Parisian civi- 
lisation. There they begin the first volume of the Rousseau or Voltaire they have 
bought, but never live to read beyond page 18 of the preface. Always useful to their 
country, they are always active ; they repair the village-pump, or they cut down the 
curate's perquisites, and thus check the monstrous aggressions of the priesthood ; 
or they get up petitions against capital punishments and negro slavery ; or they 
write to the Constitutionnel to explain their views, and look out vainly for an 
answer. 

I have but one fault to find with Grocers ; — there are too many of them. The 
Grocer himself will allow it. He is too common. Moralists who have made obser- 
vations on the Grocer when out of the latitude of Paris, pretend also to discover 
some change in his distinguishing qualities when he turns landed proprietor, and 



16 



THE GROCER. 



quits trade. The Ex-Grocer becomes slightly ferocious, sends lawyer's letters, issues 
writs, and puts in seizures, may be : but let it pass. 

Examine mankind and their different species : study their peculiarities ; and tell 
us, in this vale of tears, what is complete ? Deal mildly with Grocers ; even if they 
were perfect, what would become of us ? we should be compelled to adore them, — 
to mount them on that throne of which they are at present the stout conservatives. 
For mercy's sake, then, ye gigglers to whom this memoir is addressed, be gentle 
with these interesting bipeds, and torment them no more. Have you not enough to 
do with politics, and new plays, and new books ? 




.MRAVAW=3'22^f5S55 




^VnM-vO<5>\j^^ 




THE GRISETTE. 



BY JULES JASIN. 




ID one seek, among the various articles of Parisian 
produce, to point out that which is the most incon- 
testable Parisian, one would fix on the Grisette. In 
distant countries, travel where you will, and whither- 
soever your vagabond humour may lead you, you will 
find museums and palaces, triumphal arches and royal 
gardens, churches and cathedrals, more or less gothic : 
and will jostle against cits and grandees, prelates and 
captains, poor beggars and noble lords ; but in no city 
in Europe, whether London, Berlin, Petersburg, or Rome, will you meet with that 
little something, so fair, so fresh, so young, so slim, so active, smiling, merry? 
and easily-content, which we call Grisette ; no, not in Europe, — but why say 
Europe ? Go through all France, and only in Paris will you meet her ; the 
real Grisette, — the true, authentic, easy, careless, reckless, gladsome, frolicsome 
Grisette. 

A plague on our savants ; — they are for finding an etymology to everything, and 
have given themselves a world of trouble to learn the derivation of the word Grisette. 
Grisette, they say, first signified a grey stuff gown which poor people wore : and 
therefore (after the manner, " Tell me what you wear, and I will tell you what you 
are,") poor people who wear grey stuff gowns are to be called Grisettes, and there- 
fore Grisettes wear grey stuff gowns. Mad savants I as if our pretty Duchesses of 

D 



18 THE GRISETTE. 

the band-box — our gracious little Countesses that trip it afoot— our delicate Mar- 
chionesses that live on the labour of their little fingers ; our gallant aristocracy of 
the workshop and counter, were condemned all their life long to wear a dismal robe 
of wool ! — as if they had renounced for ever, sweet anchorites ! all the joys of life — 
all the pleasures of gay ribands and embroidery — of new gloves and new slippers, 
and other such cheap charms, and pretty resources of coquetry, as are in the reach 
of all who are poor, and fair, and young ! 

So much for the etymologists, then. Away with their etymologies and them : the 
poor old worn-out creatures have survived all human passions : and in such subjects 
as these — pretty specimens of our French coquetry — what can they discover or 
describe ? Life, beauty, gaiety, are above definitions ; and the only way to under- 
stand the fair Grisette world, — a world in our world apart, — is to watch them well. 
Go abroad of early morning, and mark who is the first woman that wakes, while all 
the rest of the city is sleeping. It is the Grisette, who rises a moment after the 
sun, and straightway makes herself beautiful for the rest of the day. Her little 
toilette is quickly over ; her shining locks are combed ; her dress from head to foot 
is neat as neat can be, — ay, truly, — has she not fashioned every morsel of it and 
sewn every stitch of it, and washed it and smoothed it with her own fair fingers ? 
Drest herself, she dresses up the little garret which she inhabits, and sets in order 
the poor nothings which she possesses : decorating her poverty as other women 
know not how to adorn their wealth. This done, she gives one last glance at the 
looking-glass ; and, having assured herself that she is as pretty to-day as she was 
yesterday, away she goes to her labour. Here, in fact, lies that point in our 
.Grisette 's character which is the most touching and respectable. An idle Grisette 
is not of the nature of Grisettes : who says " Grisette," names a little being who is 
always charming and easily happy, and ever labouring and busy. Let her grow 
idle, and she is no longer in the department of honest Grisettes. She becomes quite 
a different thing, — she. has passed the slight boundary which separates her and vice, 
Don't let me talk of her, — she will spoil our subject. 

Well, since she does labour, what is the labour of the Grisette ? It would be more 
easy to tell you what it is not : — a Grisette is good for everything, knows every- 
thing, can do everything. A legion of laborious ants, they say, will produce a 
mountain ; a Grisette is like an ant. These little creatures, so active, so slight, so 
poor, (Heaven knows how poor,) perform as many prodigies as armies. Under 
their active and industrious hands cloth, velvet, silk, gauze, are fashioning them- , 
selves endlessly and ceaselessly. To all these they give shape, and life, and grace ; 
they create them, so to speak ; and, thus created, scatter them over the whole of 
Europe, where, believe me, their innocent and repeated conquests at the point of the 
needle have been a thousand times more durable than our victories at the point of 
the sword. 

Thus they spread over the city, our poor artisans, fair or dark, rosy or pale, and 
gaily perform their tasks. They clothe the fairest portion of the human race, and 
their light fingers execute, as if at play, the most difficult labours which female 
caprice in its most ingenious fits of coquetry can invent or impose. Over the mode 
they reign despotic. They embroider queens' mantles, and shape shepherdesses' 



THE GRISETTE. 10 

aprons. And think how universal French taste must be, that these little girls, 
children of the poor, who will die as poor as their mothers, should thus become the 
all-powerful interpreters of fashion over the whole world ! Destroy this intelligent 
and laborious population, and adieu at once to all the grace of Europe. Even now 
I can fancy all the great coquettes of this world dressed at hazard, that is, ill-dressed ; 
asking in amaze of one another, " What will become of us ! " 

In this position, which is at once so high and so subordinate ; placed as they are 
between the most exaggerated luxury that the great can invent, and the poverty 
which falls to their own proper lot, the poor things must have no small share of 
prudence, as well as corn-age, to resist this luxury and this poverty. Scarcely out 
of the little garret which she inhabits, the poor Grisette is introduced into the most 
splendid shops and sumptuous houses : here she reigns, and here she dictates her 
laws without appeal. All day long she presides over the coquetry of the rich, and 
dresses them and decks them ; she envelopes these corpses, hideous as they some- 
times are, in tissues the most precious : she knows every secret resource and disguise 
of these beauties, so often deceitful. How often has she made the lean one plump, 
the crooked one straight, the plain one handsome ! And when at last the idol is thus 
decked by those hands so white and so pretty, perhaps the idol's lover arrives, to 
carry to fete or ball, not the woman, who is ugly, but the dress, which is beautiful ; 
he never thinks of the poor girl who has made it, and who is a thousand times more 
beautiful than she who wears it — of our young artist, following most likely with 
saddened looks the woman whom she has created, and sighing to herself, " And yet 
I am prettier than that ! " Indeed, indeed, it is a mighty temptation, and a mighty 
courage alone can resist it. One can fancy that a man should pass before a heap of 
gold and not touch it ; his probity saves him : but in a young and pretty girl, who, 
from being obscure and unknown as she is, can win all hearts in a moment and 
have all the world at her feet, if she will but dress herself in yonder gauze which 
has been created by her needle, the courage of resistance is wonderful indeed. She 
is alone : the dress is finished : the flowers are ready for the hair, the light scarf for 
the fair shoulders, the riband for the waist, the slipper for the foot, the glove for the 
delicate hand : what prevents the humble chrysalis from becoming butterfly on the 
instant, — what prevents the poor girl from realizing at once all the fairest dreams of 
her life, winning the love of the men, and exciting the jealousy of the whole female 
race ? Thus dressed she becomes immediately the equal of the fairest, one of the 
queens of the world : then it is that her youth shines forth : she is the pride of our 
fetes, the joy of our theatres, — art, luxury, fashion, power, open on her on a sudden, 
and her triumph is secure. Xo more labour, no more poverty ! Victory ! victory ! 
But no : this humble poverty shall not be overcome ; our heroine will resist this 
temptation of every day ; she will give back the dress to its purchaser, and will 
console herself with her songs, her gaiety, and her twenty years. Do you know how 
much they pay the Grisette for all her labours and heroism ? Little more than our 
Alexanders and Csesars, at twopence a day. To clothe her, to feed her, to lodge 
her, to dress the little flower-box before her window, — for the meat for her bird who 
sings in his cage ; for the bunch of violets which she buys every morning while going 
to work ; for those pretty little shoes, always so smart and so glossy ; for all that 



20 THE GRISETTE. 

elegance which shines over her from head to foot, and which would make many a 
lady of fashion proud ; for all this our poor Grisette has hardly as much as would 
huy a poor clerk his breakfast. And yet with so little, so little as nothing, — she is 
gay, she is happy ; all that she asks for her in her way is a little kindness and a 
little love. 

It is not all difficult the way, or rather the modest path of life over which the 
poor thing trips so lightly ; many wild-flowers grow among the thorns, and many 
little blessings are meted out so as to suit her. She has in her purse that gold 
which mediocrity can manufacture so cheaply, and which is more precious and 
inexhaustible than all the gold of Peru. She is " content with little — content with 
nothing." Love and Poetry, the two angels who encourage and console, accompany 
her always. She is bound to poetry by her poverty, first, and then by her pro- 
fession : and to love by her fresh beauty and native graces. There is a little world 
of youth in our Paris, to whom the Grisette is a Providence. What would that 
beardless race, which forms the honour and glory of our colleges, be without her ? 
She is the goddess, patroness too, of lawyers without briefs ; of deputies without 
seats ; of generals without epaulets. Not a young man who lives in Paris upon a 
meagre allowance and his expectancies, but has won the heart of one of these pretty 
little Countesses of the Rue Vivienne. Love, labour, economy, the lovers have 
these among them, and each brings to the common stock all that he possesses : in 
the first place, nothing ; next, a very fine appetite ; and, lastly, a great store of 
carelessness ; they are three of the principal ingredients in happiness, and what 
would one with more ? During the week our pair of turtles are separated, and each 
works on his own side : one dissects bodies, for instance, the other dresses them ; 
one studies the rights of persons, the other the robes of persons. Scarcely, dining 
all this period, can they see each other, smile at each other ; scarcely once can the 
lover get a peep through the half-drawn window-curtain at the shop, where his 
mistress is working. But Sunday comes, and then no more work ; farewell to needles 
and pins, good-bye to law-books and counters ! Sunday comes ; it is the day when 
he is rich, and she is beautiful ; and both are loving, as if to make up for the time 
lost in the week. Away, then, hie the pair ; away to Versailles or Montmorency, 
Saint Germain or Saint Cloud ; — he has his new coat, and his best waistcoat, and all 
his week's savings in his pocket ; she has her smartest bonnet, and her prettiest 
band ; and off they go to take possession of every court or corner in the neighbour- 
hood of Paris. At the aspect of these innocent loves, the rich and the idle retire, 
and give them place : they know that Sunday belongs to Grisettes and Students 
exclusively ; and thus, in the country during the summer, in the town during the 
winter, over one day in the week they reign paramount. They fill the woods and 
they fill the theatres ; all the flowers of the fields are theirs, and all the tears of the 
melodrama. Fifty-two days of reign have they in the year : what other earthly 
power lasts for so long a time ? 

In this fashion the young man's last youth passes away ; and, supported as it 
were on the poor little Grisette' s fair shoulder, he marches up to eminence ; he 
becomes something, lawyer, physician, sub-lieutenant ; and then ambition seizes on 
him, and love quits him, and he grows too great (ingratc as he is) for his merry 



THE GRISETTE. £1 

little friend of the merry old times : he abandons her alone to that misery which two 
together easily can bear : and exchanges this loving heart for a few acres of land, 
or a few bags of money, that his country bride brings him. And she, poor girl, 
where is she ? She weeps, and she resigns herself, and she consoles herself, and 
then, perhaps, she begins over again. Often, even, she marries ; a woful change, 
indeed ! from society to tears, from merry poverty to sordid and vulgar indigence. 
All is over with her : it is now the butterfly which becomes a chrysalis. She does 
not die, luckily, without leaving a tolerable provision of Grisettes to succeed her. 

It is wisest, however, not to examine things too closely, lest the dark side of the 
picture overpower the bright. There is no rose but hath its leaves scattered by the 
breeze ; no fruit but is subject to the ravages of the canker-worm : and Heaven be 
thanked, it is not all of these charming girls whose lives are doomed to so melan 
choly a close. Some escape by chance, others by good fortune, and a few by virtue 
— virtue as understood by the moralists. And a propos of virtue, I will relate to 
you the history of Jenny. 

Jenny's means of life were — but I hardly know how to explain them to you, my 
fair readers. As she had, however, a kind heart and a pure mind, it is right that 
she should have her little biography, if only a page, set apart in our artistical collec- 
tion. Jenny, then, was useful to Art. I will call her Jenny the Flower-girl, because 
when she first came to Paris she sold roses and violets — pale as herself, poor child. 
There are but two or three places in Paris where the sale of flowers is likely to be 
profitable. Around the Opera, where the gas is brilliant, and women arrayed in 
laces and diamonds throng to drink of the stream of rich harmony, the sale is sure ; 
but when Jenny came to Paris she sought only to sell her flowers on the Pont des 
Arts, — flowers without colour or perfume, emblems but too genuine of academic 
poetry*, — flowers gathered the day before, and therefore such as only Grisettes would 
purchase. No wonder that Jenny had but ill success ! 

Jenny the Flower-girl wept and waited in vain. There were old men, — city 
rakes, who made certain proposals to Jenny, and overwhelmed her with words of 
double meaning. She neither heeded nor understood them. An old libertine is the 
ugliest specimen of humanity ! The poor girl, however, continued to sell her 
flowers when she could find purchasers ; but these were so few and so far between, 
that she resolved to quit the miserable trade at any price. At any price, did I say ? 
I should have excepted the price of her innocence, which Jenny would not have 
bartered for the miserable fortune which fades so quickly, and leaves nothing but 
shame. " Take courage, then — courage, Jenny ! fear not for your pretty face : the 
happiness of innocence is still in store for your youth and beauty ! Your rosy cheeks, 
slender fingers, elegant figure, noble carriage, and Arab feet, which mould into 
graceful form even your worn shoes, were never meant for debasement. 

" Come to my studio, Jenny ! remain at a distance ; you have nothing to fear. 
Place yourself in the ray of the sun, my child ; be mute and calm, while I envelope 
you with art and poetry. You shall be my idol for a day — a painter's idol. Already 
can I embody some of the transporting visions of my sojourn in Italy. Stir not, 

* The building of the French Academy is opposite to the Pont d-es Arts. 



22 THE GRISETTE. 

Jenny ; remain under the spell of my pencil till thine image is fixed upon my canvass 
and in my soul. What metamorphoses will be thine ! As a holy virgin, men will 
prostrate themselves at thy feet and adore thee. As a sweetly smiling girl, thou 
wilt be the dream of the young poet, the inspirer of his verse. Now, be grave for a 
moment ; raise thine arched eyebrows, repress that smile, and thou shalt be a 
queen, lady ! Again, recline thy cheek upon thy hand, softly smile, abandon thyself 
to the poetic languor of a girl dreaming, and I will paint thee as the mistress of 
Raphael or Rubens, which is more than if I were to make thee the mistress of 
a king. 

" Jenny — all-inspiring, inexhaustible theme — come : inspiration has seized and 
oppresses me, — the fervour of art is in my veins, — my palette is charged with the 
colours of the iris, — my pencils surround me, — I am breathless as a hound panting 
for the chase. Come, come — it is time, Jenny ! " And Jenny approached, docile 
as the imagination itself to all the heavenly impulses of innocence and poetry 
in art. 

At the wish of the artist she became a beautiful Greek girl, like those who were 
the models of Apelles, when the sculptor would portray the Goddess of Beauty 
and Love. Now she transformed herself into a pensive beauty — an exquisitely- 
formed Athenian ; then a matron of the empire, or of the time of Juvenal ; anon, 
coming from the festival, listening to the songs of the Bacchanals, or reading- 
Horace's Ode to Glycere or Neera ; and once more she is rich and beautiful, 
reclining in a litter borne by Gallic slaves, substituting the costume of summer for 
that of winter. But what should be before all, and is perhaps last thought of, — has 
poor Jenny breakfasted this morning ? Imagine what it is for a poor girl to remain in 
a fixed attitude, immoveable and mute, for hours — who must unite tenderness or anger, 
disorder or love, with the most perfect calmness ! The artist's model is the greatest 
of all actresses — the sole representative — with but one spectator, and the action con- 
tinuing through a summer's day — with the slightest possible portion of drapery ; a 
queen with a handkerchief for her crown, — a dancer with a black apron for her ball- 
dress ; or, on the other hand, portraying a holy martyr, with eyes upraised towards 
heaven, and singing one of Beranger's songs ! Poor girl, she is whirled from one 
extreme to the other at the caprice of the artist ; burnt, strangled, crucified, or 
surrounded with all the luxury and voluptuousness of the East. She is alternately 
in heaven and in hell : now an archangel, with golden wings, — and at a word she is 
debased into a courtezan, with wanton and ignoble eye and carriage. She is every- 
thing, passing through all conditions of life ; now a proud lady, a citizen, a queen, 
a goddess ! And where are the grateful, the sustaining plaudits ? Not a single 
clapping of hands, — not the slightest share of the just admiration excited by the 
chef-d'oeuvre itself. The spectator gazes upon the picture, and exclaims with rap- 
ture, " What a divine woman ! — what eyes — what hands — what an inspired head ! " 
The artist is lauded to the skies, riches and honours are showered upon him ; but 
there is not even a compensating look for Jenny, poor Jenny, who inspired the 
picture ! 

Strange combination of beauty and misery, of ignorance and art, of intelligence 
and apathy ! Singular abandonment of a beautiful person ! But not so wholly, cither ; 



THE GRISETTE. 23 

Jenny continued chaste after obeying implicitly the caprices of the most whimsical of 
men. Art is a universal refuge for all who seek an excuse for actions unappreciable 
by the vulgar. Art purifies and exalts all within reach of its influence, even to the 
poor girl who confides her person to the artist's skill. The artist and the subject are 
alike favoured ; the undisguised forms of beauty belong to them, confided without 
shrinking or regret. 

And Jenny was as modest as she was beautiful. She submitted to the artist 
willingly in all that belonged to Art ; but there she paused. When the artist was 
tempted to become a man, Jenny quitted her brilliant character to become a simple 
woman, in order to defend herself. She resumed her humble garments, and went 
her way. A queen, or even a saint, could not have won more regard and esteem 
than Jenny ! 

" What has become of her ? " Would you know ? She has filled and is filling our 
churches with such beautiful saints as even a Protestant would worship. She has 
peopled our apartments with graceful pictures, and sculptures to delight the eyes 
and gladden the hearts of all. She has given her expressive face and her delicate 
hands to the historical painters ; her sweet influence has been felt in the studios of 
all our great artists, to whom it has long been a guarantee of .success to have Jenny 
for a model. And Jenny disdained to extend her patronage to inferior talent ; she 
confined her fair face only to genius, — in genius alone had she faith. If the favoured 
artist were poor, Jenny gave credit and encouragement ; she has, in truth, done 
more for the art than our three last ministers, all put together. But, alas ! the Art 
has lost Jenny, — lost the finest and most beautiful model, but not without return and 
without hope. 

And what has become of Jenny ? She has experienced the good fortune which 
we should like to see attend every young, pretty, and virtuous woman ; she has 
become rich and happy ; and what good women always are, much respected, caressed, 
beloved. And though now a great lady, she has preserved her enthusiastic love of 
Art ; in fact, has remained an artist. She has, it is true, exchanged her humble 
garments, her simple neckerchief and worn shawl, for diamonds, cachemires, 
embroidered dresses, and all the luxuries and refinements which wealth can procure. 
She has gloves of Venice for her white hands, the perfumes of the East for her soft 
skin, a title and servants : but hesitate not to approach. Amid all the surrounding 
pomp, there is still Jenny — Jenny the Flower-girl — Jenny the artist's model. If 
you are a great artist — if your name is Gerard, Ingres, Delaroche, or Vernet, when 
you want a woman's hand, Jenny will throw down her Venice gloves ; or, should you 
need a bust, Jenny will take off her cacheniire : if you are painting an Atalanta, and 
require a leg and foot of exquisite proportions, Jenny the Duchess will as readily lend 
you hers as did Jenny the Flower-girl ; she is so natural, so ingenuous, so devoted 
to the Art, — loving beauty for its own sake, and pleased to be beautiful, because she 
can every where win admiration, — on canvass, in marble, in bronze, or in plaster. 
The Art, then, need not regret Jenny's fortune, since it is still her delight and hap- 
piness to belong to it. Art, indeed, has but lent her in marriage to a great lord, 
who is bound to restore her to the necessities of the artist as if it were by an express 
stipulation in the marriage contract. 



24 



THE GRISETTE. 



Such is the simple and affecting history of Jenny the Flower-girl. I make no 
apology for introducing it here ; for, does not the Beauty which inspires a great work 
of art deserve at least a share of the glory and the reward with the hand that executes 
it ? But to conclude as I began : — Where else, in all the world, can he found a 
little being like this — ready for whatever may befall it — for sadness or gaiety, for 
smiles or tears, for self-denial of every kind, for labour or idleness, for vice or virtue, 
— supporting as well the extreme of enjoyment as of misery — her temper always 
alike under all the vicissitudes of fortune — as happy in coarse stuff as in the finest 
silk — as much at ease in the drawing-room as in the garret, — speaking or singing at 
once the language of the Versailles of Louis XIV. and that of the Paris Gardens of 
1839 ; — now a stately lady of rank, now a laughing and frolicsome girl, — now poet 
or artist, now woman of the world, — now overflowing with spirits, now thoughtful and 
discreet, — now a coquet, now really in love, — always good-tempered and lively, and 
prepared for everything, — and, to sum up all in one word, the true, complete, and 
unique — Grisette of Paris ? 





>>*<-evx»-<sr: ^ 



THE LAW STUDENT. 



BY E. DE LA BEDOLLIERRE. 




> NDER the age of eighteen the young aspirant leaves the 
j High-school. He has taken his first degree, after having 
gone through his classes — that is, after a ten years' 
thumbing of good dictionaries has taught him to construe 
Virgil, and to con iEsop's fables. His father and 
mother, sitting in their chimney-corner, consult upon the 
future destiny of their only son. " He must study the 
law," says the father, with the gravity of a sage ; " the law is indispensable to finish 
his education, and there is nothing that a barrister may not arrive at." 

Oh, simple patriarch ! oh, unsuspecting parent ! to what does the name of bar- 
rister lead ? What becomes of the thousands of scholars who crowd the forms of 
the Law-school year after year ? Are they all placed and provided for ? — are they 
the ornaments of the bar and the bench ? — Alas, the greater part of them never set 
foot in court. A few may become notaries, or attorneys, or clerks of the courts, but 
the remainder are scattered in a hundred professions. That broker who dabbles in 
the transfer of stocks in trade without a business, — has studied the law. That 
stroller, who hawks his misery and his tinsel on the rustic stage — has studied the 
law. That public scribbler, who composes love-letters for lady's-maids, and poetry 
for the blacking shops — has studied the law. That dramatist, who fires the stage 
with the terrors of melodrama, — has been called to the bar. Every branch of public 
and private business — the army, the shops, the very stalls and booths, are crowded 



26 



THE LAW STUDENT. 



by ex-students, in ignoble disguise, who regret the three years they lost under 
pretext of studying the laws — of which they do not know a word. 

But, notwithstanding all this, every year, in the month of November, a throng of 
lads arrive from all the corners of France, to take up their quarters in the lodging- 
houses of the " Quartier Latin," the land of Latin — a huge camp of learners, whose 
outposts reach from the Pont-Neuf on the one hand, to the Barriere d'Enfer on the 
other. 

Our new-comer is soon installed. He has paid his immatriculation : he has 
chosen his professors ; and he has made his first appearance at lecture, where he 
will take care to show himself as little as possible. What more does he want ! — a 
companion to share the cares of life — and to brush his boots. On this search he starts: 
an acquaintance from his own part of the world, a two-year-man, whose distin- 
guished manners and forcible conversation dazzled the great people of his native 
place during the whole of last vacation, has been entreated by the worthy parents 
of our freshman to guide the tyro, amidst the perils of that accursed Babylon, to 
which the heir of their hopes has been sent with so many fears and sighs. 

Full of his important charge, the Mentor loses no time in introducing his Tele- 
machus to the mysteries of the Bal Montesquieu, as much for the purpose of 
forming his pupil at once to good habits as of renewing a few old acquaintances of 
his own. 

A quadrille and two galopades are quite sufficient to cast our young student at 
the feet of his charming partner. She answers to the name of Irma, Amanda, or 
some other name of the same family. How modest she is ! he could not get her 
to tell him where she lives : but he will soon find her out. He watches her ; he 
pounces upon her on the narrow side- way of the Rue Dauphine. She was passing, 
wrapped in a large tartan shawl, a close black velvet cap on her head, on her arm one 
of those straw and willow baskets which hang upon the arms of so large a major- 
ity of the women of our excellent city, and on her feet shoes of rather equivocal 
neatness. Yet, with all these disadvantages, our student recognizes the slight make 
and the pretty eyes of his last night's partner — he had already guessed that her 
heart gave him all he required. His choice is made ; the treaty of alliance is signed 
at table at the Grande Chaumiere du Mont Parnasse.* There, indeed, you would 
not know her to be the same girl whose sandals were sweeping the crossings the 
other day. She is buxom, and smart, and sparkling, and curled, and pomatumed, 
and set off till she is charming to look at. She has on a cambric drawn bonnet, a 
muslin frock, white stockings, and a bright blue scarf. 

The loves of the Student and the Grisette are none of those headstrong passions 
which make all the weeping and wailing of our modern drama : in a short time he 
treats her hardly better than a maid- servant, sends her on errands, and makes her 
get him tobacco, and brandy, and ham for supper. When he treats his friends, it 
is she, who, before she takes her place at table, cooks the cutlets and lays the cloth. 
It must be confessed, to her praise, the grisette lends herself with the best grace to 
all these household cares, which render her indispensable, and give her the air of a 

* The Vauxhall of the Parisian Grisettes. 



THE LAW STUDENT. 27 

married woman. Happy is she if nothing but the vacation breaks the link of this 
transient intercourse — if she can bid her temporary spouse farewell with tears, and 
believe his promise that he will write to her ! It is but too often, that, tired of his 
home, the traitor only seeks to regain his independence. He picks quarrels with 
" his woman," he accuses her of infidelity, and by dint of a course of preparatory 
quarrels he gets rid of her. One of his friends succeeds him ; and the poor girl 
is passed from hand to hand like an endorsed bill or a pawnbroker's ticket, till she 
falls into age and ugliness, to perish in the lowest stage of degradation. 

If he has no female hand to prepare his meals at home, the Law- student may 
take his choice between a multitude of eating-houses, whose luxurious advertise- 
ments insure him a wholesome and copious feed for eighteen sous. Poupon, Viot, 
Rousseau ! calumniated cooks ! Like Figaro, you are worth more than your repu- 
tation. Nothing but slander could accuse your innocent assistants of converting 
horse's head into calves' head hashed, or of presenting Angora cats under the falla- 
cious aspect of jugged hare. Your beef-steaks may be slightly coriacious, — your 
broth may be a trifle too aquatic, — your hashes may be somewhat suspicious : but 
not the less do you deserve the esteem and the custom of whosoever possesses a warm 
heart, a complaisant digestion, and eighteen sous in his pocket. Let the world's 
malice rage, oh, venerable sanctuaries of cheap gastronomy ! As long as there is a 
law- school in Paris, you will continue to supply to an ever -increasing multitude 
your semi-basins of broth at ten centimes, and your duck and turnips at six sous 
the plate-full. 

If we were asked by what outward signs the Law-student may be recognised, we 
should reply, that he does not dress in the latest fashion, but that he creates a fashion 
for himself. He takes care to let his hair and his beard grow, in order, as he says, 
not to look like a grocer; but at certain periods of the year, before the examinations, 
these signs of anarchy disappear. His head resembles the style of a member of the 
Jacobin club ; his tuft and moustache that of a gallant at the court of Louis XIII. 
Some time ago he gloried in a white hat and a red waistcoat, a la Robespierre. 
Now, whether he comes from Beam or not, he must wear the light cap and the red 
belt, because, he says, this costume is in character. A colossal pipe is absolutely 
indispensable to the Student ; he is a wholesale smoker ; he stifles the passers-by 
with volleys of the nauseous tobacco retailed by the wisdom of the French excise. 
His pipe bowl attests the skill of the smoker, and presents the effigy of a Turk, 
Henry IV., Robert Macaire, Francois I., St. Just, or some other hero. His heart 
beats high if he has succeeded in getting an Algerine chibouque, or an Indian hookah, 
to give him an air of oriental grandeur when he lies upon his sofa of red Utrecht 
velvet. He is king of the Latin Quarter : at the theatre, he lords it — he lords it 
in the tavern — he lords it in the street. His lodging-keeper respects him, the 
eating-house keeper courts him, the coffee-house keeper worships him : his credit 
is solid, for his father is well off ; and he may take the upper place on the pavement, 
— he may claim the smiles of his fairest neighbours. A sultan without a rival, he 
scatters his favours at pleasure : and he recalls the better days of French gallantry, 
by offering bouquets to the ladies who frequent the boxes at the theatres of the 
Pantheon and the Luxembourg. 



28 



THE LAW STUDENT. 



But the most strongly marked character of them all, is he whom the students call 
a " Bambocheur," — the Tom and Jerry of the schools. His fellows may dawdle away 
a careless half-hour in the divan or the tea-garden, but the Bambocheur passes his 
life there. At ten in the morning he turns into a tavern, consumes infinite snacks 
of brandy and pots of beer, breakfasts copiously, smokes a considerable number of 
pipes, plays piquet and billiards, and in the evening, or the noon of night, sings a 
roystering strain in chorus : — 




We're the boys who lead the ball, Gai - ly at the Chau - mie - re. Foot it 



pt 



t=P-E 



* 



P^E£ 



r q 6 - 



i=£ 



:t 



%J up and down the hall, Jig it with "Robert Macaire :" Foot it, jig it, foot 



I 



5@E 



i= E+4-E : 



m 



$=*- 



cezre 



$= 



* ti S 



5 



4- 



it, jig it round - a - bout ; 



Hip, hip, hur-rah, la, la, la, la, la, Hip, 



Se 



e=i=! 



m 



■ i 



hip, hur - rah ! la 



La, la, la, La, la, la 



La, la, la, 



The Carnival is the element of the Bambocheur : he is then in his glory. For 
fear he should lose his watch in the confusion of the masked balls, he takes care to 
deposit it in the hands of an eminent pawnbroker, and the same respectable trustee 
consents to receive his cloak, for which he can have no use, in exchange for the 
jacket and periwig of a postlad. Cares to the wind ! troubles be gone ! Tom and 
Jerry have paid no immatriculation ; they will have no examinations to pass — no 
career to pursue — no family to please : all their faculties are wrapped up in the 
present, in the wine they quaff, in the nymph they whirl, in the stir and frenzy of 
the ball to-night. 

If, in one of these mad evenings, a tranquil spectator should look down from the 
roof of the Pantheon Theatre, he would at first perceive nothing but a huge motley 
of colours, sprinkled with one canopy of dust, and clouded in a mist of stifling 
vapours. Then, in the midst of this chaos, he might distinguish heads, and arms, 
and legs, without seeing to whom they belonged, so rapid is the whirlpool in which 
the dense mass twists, and bounds, and boils, and circles on. From the depths of 
the pit he catches a strange roar, mixed with the wild dissonance of human voices, 
pitched in all imaginable keys, from the lowest growl to the shrillest squall. The 
scene is like a field of battle — like an unutterable limbo — a labyrinth of human 
bodies — a pandemonium of dancers ; it is a masquerade. 

The outward man of the Student has told us so much of his outward habits, that 
we may now interrogate his inward propensities. The fine arts — literature — phi- 
losophy — and politics, — he will study them all, every thing but his law. He devours 
the new novels, and decides the fate of the last new play. The portrait of Madame 



THE LAW STUDENT. 29 

George Sand, hooked by a pin to his bed's head, bears witness to his enthusiastic 
admiration for that distinguished hermaphrodite. He follows M . de Balzac in his 
eccentric chase of modern manners, and adores, in Victor Hugo, the chief and leader 
of the modern school of poetry. What should he care for the stiff and stilted tra- 
gedies, composed, like a rule-of-three sum, by putting together a certain number of 
princes, princesses, and confidants ? The tribute of his enthusiasm is paid wherever 
the drama is most exciting, and the plot most extravagant. To-night they play a 
new piece of his favourite author : he goes without his dinner — by two o'clock he is 
at the doors, he is the first at the check-taker's stall, he is sure to carry off a ticket, 
tho' but one remain. The play begins : they are hissing in one of the boxes. — 
" Turn him out ; turn him out !" cries the Student, " he is an Academician !" — 
Again. "Turn him out ! off with the Classics I" Then comes a burst of high and 
harmonious poetry ; the house shakes with applause ; the Student claps with fury, 
and casts a look of contempt on the wretch who is vehemently suspected of being 
an Academician. 

It is rare that the Law- student does not play on some instrument. He takes 
lessons on the flageolet, the German flute, or the French horn, or at least he can 
crow an air on the accordeon. In spite of police regulations, he claps his bugle to 
his mouth at one in the morning, when he comes home from the play, to console 
himself for the dull milk-and-water piece they have been acting. The landlord 
scolds ; the neighbours remove : but what does that signify to the intrepid virtuoso, 
who continues his loud reveillee to the cats of the neighbourhood. If his lungs are 
exhausted, he must sacrifice to the Muses: the cacoethes seizes him, — he must 
write. He addresses letters to all the magazines, and half the papers, which are never 
inserted ; he sends dramas and farces to the managers of all the theatres on the 
Boulevards, which are never read. He take the MS. of a novel of the heart, (in 2 
vols. 8vo.) to Lachapelle, or to H. Souverain, the cautious and discreet receivers of 
these remarkable compositions. The tales he composes almost invariably begin : — 

" It was in a lovely morning of spring, that two men, wrapped in large cloaks, 
were silently descending the hill, &c." Or sometimes he rushes in medias res, ac- 
cording to the following recipe : — 

" ' By the mass !' exclaimed our young hero, as he emptied at a draught his goblet 
of Hungarian wine, 'we live, my lords, in times,' &c." His poetry is generally 
consumptive, languid, pulmonary, giving over, and given over by, all the world : full 
of I's and interjections ; as, for instance : — 

" I wander weary and alone 
Along the world, an outcast's moan 

Breaks from my pallid lips ! 
All things are born to nurse my sadness 1 
My heart is struck with gall and madness, 

My soul is in eclipse !" 

This stanza came to light in a cloud of tobacco smoke, and under the inspiration 
of the brandy-bottle. When he sees that glory and the publishers turn their backs 
upon him, the student moults into the condition of a neglected genius ; and as he 
saunters across the Pont des Arts, he casts a look of fierce melancholy upon the 



30 THE LAW STUDENT. 

turbid stream below. Happily he may derive consolation from philosophy, for he, 
too, is a philosopher : no sooner has a theory been sprung, than it meets among the 
students with adepts, partisans, and fanatics. During the Restoration, they swore 
by Voltaire ; now they have borrowed the semi-moral and religious tint of the 
present day. Some still applaud the economic theories of St. Simon, or the reveries 
of Fourier; whilst a greater number fulfil the precepts of the Pere Enfantin in the 
noisy follies of the Bal du Prado. 

The political opinions of the Law- student are of that class which invariably make 
old and asthmatic folks say — " Ay ! you are a young man, you'll live to change 
those notions \" or, " Those dreams will never come true : I can see you have a 
young head !" There are a certain number of beings persuaded that after thirty 
nothing remains but to wax pursy, and grow like an oyster. The Student is a 
naming patriot ; his room is hung with the portraits of the leaders of the Mountain. 
The Revolution of July was, in his eyes, a rose-water revolution — a revolution in 
pumps and silk stockings. If he had had his will, war should have been declared 
in 1830 to all the world, and the tricolor flag should have gone round the globe. 
He deplores the fate of Poland, and curses the Autocrat. At the time when the 
national subscriptions were flourishing, his name figured on the lists, accompanied 
with some epithets of more or less intensity, as, " A. B., a friend of liberty and of 
his country, the enemy of tyrants and oppression, Two- pence halfpenny." The 
late lamented Society of the Rights of Man reckoned a vast number of Law- students 
in its ranks. They harangued the sections, announced officially that the Faubourgs 
of Antoine and Martin were ready to come down, slept in red nightcaps, and, when 
called upon, armed for rebellion. Alas ! not a few of these victims of enthusiasm 
fell on the blood-stained pavement of St. Mary. 

The deadliest animosity burns between the Law- student and the Policeman. 
They are foes as irreconcileable as the Capulets and the Montagues — not without 
reason. Who is it that catches the students at the ball in the flagrant crime of the 
national cachoucha ? — who takes them to the station house ? — who checks the spring 
of their airy steps ? — the Policeman. But the principal motives of the Student's 
aversion are yet more serious. He execrates, in the person of the policeman, the 
agent, — the armed myrmidon of the government : and as soon as he sees him coming 
he throws an expression of intense disdain into his countenance, and mutters in his 
sleeve the contumelious name of " Informer." 

Nevertheless, the political extravagance of the Law- student is more superficial 
than real : it conceals the sympathies of an honest and generous heart, and at a 
later age he will not abjure the opinions of his youth. As an elector, his vote is 
given for the opposition ; as a father, he inculcates the same principles on his 
children ; as a sentinel at the outposts of the world, his voice is always raised in 
favour of useful reform. 

Among the students there are a good number of those hard-working fellows, 
whom nothing daunts, and who mingle with their law- studies the serious pursuits 
of history and literature. He who chooses to follow this arid path is sure of his 
reward, but he will be called a Plodder. The Plodder knows neither the pleasures 
nor the cares of prodigality. He makes himself scarce ; his existence is a problem. 



THE LAW STUDENT. 31 

He is a young man, with no fortune, who wishes to succeed, who has the courage 
to read Duranton, to face, without shrinking, the voluminous precedents of Dalloz 
and Sirey, who places himself in an attorney's office, and after two years of assi- 
duous labour, obtains the important post of third clerk. His fortune is secure. 

There is hardly a student who does not take to plodding at least once a year, 
for the approach of the examinations causes a complete perturbation, a general 
shaking- down of the whole Latin Quartier. To work they set ; to the neglected 
codes they run ; they sit up at night ; they are denied to their friends ; they bury 
themselves with Rogron and Ducaurroy. The statutes are dissected; the Code passes 
into an abstract, and after six weeks' toil, the Student often is just ready — to be 
plucked. The victim protests against this act of injustice, and says the professors 
are scoundrels. 

Three, four, or five years suffice for the Student to pass triumphantly through his 
five probations, including the thesis. You may recognize in an instant in the Salle 
des Pas Perdus* him who has just been called. He flaunts along in his borrowed 
gown ; his heaving breast raises his tawny frill ; he carries under his arm an immense 
portfolio, stuffed with papers, to simulate the absent briefs ; he invites his acquaint- 
ances to come and see him in court, where they are sure to find him, and if he per- 
ceives some big- wig near him, he raises his cap half an inch from his forehead, to 
pursuade the profane vulgar that he is acquainted with the lion of the court. 

The actual call to the bar gives rise to one subject of extreme embarrassment to 
the licentiate. The regulations of the honorable Society of Advocates require that 
the candidate for that honour should at least inhabit suitable chambers on the first 
or second floor, and that he should be master of a library adequately furnished with 
books of jurisprudence. Unhappily, the licentiate has been living in the Place Sor- 
bonne, at the fifth story above the entresol, and his law library consists of Beranger's 
songs, Voltaire's Tales, the Contrat Social, an odd volume of one of Paul de Kock's 
novels, and a few more old tomes. In a fortunate hour, one of his friends, a man of 
business, leaves the keys of a superb set of chambers in his keeping. He gives his 
address at his friend's residence ; and the visitor, whose duty it is to see that these 
conditions are complied with, is not more astonished at the splendid abode of 
so young a colleague than at his numerous and well- chosen library, and his desks 
laden with briefs and cases of every kind. 

In the spouting-clubs, where the Student and junior advocates learn the art of 
defending the widow and the orphan, the youthful aspirant pleads with equal em- 
phasis and erudition. He quotes the year-books and the digest, Pothier and Gaius ; 
and crams his speech with scraps of Latin. 

" Yes," he exclaims, " in the question now before us, my learned friend on the 
other side is penitus extraneus; he is urged on by the hope of gain, certat de lucro 
captando, whilst we — we, certamus de damno vitando." The junior advocate is fond 
of anticipating the arguments of the other side, and it is extraordinary if you do not 
detect in his speech two or three phrases pronounced in a shrill voice, and beginning 
— " My friends on the other side will, perhaps," — and then, after enumerating these 

* The Westminster Hall of the Parisian Bar. 



32 



THE LAW STUDENT. 



imaginary objections, he throws back his sleeve, raises his arms to Heaven, and ex- 
claims : — " Is it possible to imagine — I ask, gentlemen, whether it be possible to ima- 
gine a line of argument more entirely unsupported by the facts of the case, more 
contrary to the principles of law, more extravagant to the ears of the court, more — 
I check myself, gentlemen, lest my rising indignation should lead me to forget what 
is due to the audience which I have the honour of addressing." 
Sunt verba et voces, praetereaque nihil. 

But, notwithstanding these spouting propensities, the forensic societies form the 
young barrister to habits of public speaking. He has the advantage of acting in his 
turn as judge, president, attorney-general, prosecutor, or defender; and he learns to 
plead for, or against, the first question which occurs — an art for which he may find 
an every- day application. 

We have launched our Student in the world ; we have seen him shake off the dust 
of the schools ; and now nothing remains but to wish him a successful career, and 
a throng of clients, so that he may not be obliged, after long and bootless efforts, to 
scribble for a newspaper, or to enlist in the Hussars. 





^^KTv*$^\**\^ V0 



-^lowcul/t- 



THB POLITICAL LADY. 




POLITICAL LADIES. 



BY COMTE HORACE DE VIEL-CASTEL. 




RE-EMINENTLY popular among the works which 
form our juvenile library, is " Numa Pompilius ; " nor is 
any French writer better known to, or appreciated by, 
the world, than the Chevalier de Florian. It is to 
him and to his book the nymph Egeria, that immor- 
tal Privy Councillor of one of the first Roman Kings, 
is indebted for the universal reputation she enjoys ; 
to him is due the honour of having given a proverbial 
signification to her name, and of having torn it, so to speak, from the ungrateful 
oblivion of history, by placing it as a proud symbol in the common treasury 
of poetical creations. Thanks to M. de Florian, that perfumed shepherd of the 
groves of Sceaux — Penthievre,* we have seen Agnes Sorel and Madame de Main- 
tenon transformed, by a sort of historical imagining, into water-nymphs, and 
Charles the Seventh and Louis the Fourteenth into modern Numas. But in our 
days — when it is pretty nearly decided that a Constitutional King may reign, but 
cannot govern — in our days, and in France, a royal Egeria might die of famine in 
her humid cave. Now, however disinterested an Egeria is, or may be, she does not 
attach herself to fictions, whether crowned or not. The modern Egeria will be the 

* The Chevalier de Florian was a gentilhomme cFhonneur to the Duke of Penthievre, whose resi- 
dence was at Sceaux, near Paris. 



34 POLITICAL LADIES. 

adjective feminine of a reality only. She no longer inhabits a grotto fitted up with 
a few shells, green moss, and a brook of clear water ; nor does she now con- 
ceal herself from the worship of the Many, to luxuriate in the platonic endearments 
of the One. No ; the Egeria of the nineteenth century is less impalpable : she has 
resolved on being a woman — nay, a woman of the world ; the Egeria or Egerias 
of our acquaintance are born and die like ordinary mortals : they marry, have 
lovers, ride on horseback, go to balls, and leave the impress of their footsteps on the 
avenues of our walks. 

The Egeria of the Chevalier de Florian would be, in the present day, a Political 
Lady — the good La Fontaine would call her the " fly on the coach-wheel" — and in 
our opinion La Fontaine would describe her correctly. We would premise, however, 
that the coach of the state not being exactly that which most occupies usnow-a-days 
— each political party — each coterie, indeed, having its own especial " coach," — 
we are compelled to recognize the existence of as many " flies" as we count 
" coaches" in France. 

Two great classes here present themselves to our notice, — the Ministerial " Fly," 
and the " Fly" of the Opposition : they belong, nevertheless, to the same species, 
spring from the same moral principle, and have so much in common, that you can 
distinguish them only by the difference of their colour. 

The Political Lady is seldom a very young woman ; her age ceases to be avowed ; 
it cannot even be guessed at, and up to the day of her death she has the ability to 
maintain herself in this doubtful position, which leaves the men who surround her 
suspended between respect, and that impertinent gallantry which some women con- 
descend to place in the list of " Attentions." But to support this pretension to the 
title of " Political Lady" — to see her drawing-room transformed, either into a kind of 
Cabinet Council or Club, — two conditions are essential, and these are as the key- 
stone to all the other requisites — the Political Lady, whether Ministerial or Oppo- 
sitionist, must move in the first circles, and possess a large fortune. Destitute of 
these essentials, the Political Lady will obtain but slight consideration — nay, will 
be esteemed by many people only a mere bustling busy-body. If she is not a 
widow, — widowhood being an immense advantage, — she should be furnished with 
one of those easy and discreet husbands who occupy a sort of " Steward-of-the- 
household" position about their wives ; functionaries of subaltern rank — an exist- 
ence rather than a person — a something understood, but scarcely expressed — a kind 
of nonentity. On all state occasions, — on New Year's day, — this shadow of a 
substance will receive the cards of his wife's political friends, but he will know 
none of them ; — he devotes himself to the domestic affairs of the establishment ; 
but the final arrangement, even of these, is not with him. He is permitted, per- 
haps, to conduct his daughter to the public walks, but in no way does he influence 
her education. In a word, this husband is nothing more than a name, an item in 
the social compact, to which the sign-manual of the wife gives its only authenticity. 
As Madame de Regnacourt (the Egeria of Ministers), and Madame de Divindroit 
(the tutelary goddess of Opposition,) have both a reasonable number of lovers, it 
will be understood that the whole sisterhood of Political Ladies is liable to this 
little peculiarity. 



POLITICAL LADIES. * 35 

Literature has few charms for the Political Lady. She does not indulge in light 
reading, and no romance obtains the entree of her drawing-room or boudoir ; but 
on her tables, sofas, chairs, and chimney-pieces, the Journals muster in strong force, 
and assume attitudes of conscious dignity ; while political pamphlets, documents of 
diplomacy, and even the opinions of some of the Deputies, printed separately on fine 
"hot-pressed," are the ornaments and darlings of her library. The Marchioness 

of , one of the most conspicuous Political Ladies of our era, is even said to 

read regularly every year those immense folios which comprise the various chapters 
of the Budget. On certain days the Political Ladies crowd eagerly to the diplo- 
matic box of the Chamber of Deputies ; — they murmur approval or dissent — they 
applaud in under-tones, — and during the pauses which occasionally take place, they 
maintain warm discussions with those placed immediately behind them. 

Some, indeed, of still higher pretensions, affect the language of a learned Incom- 
prehensibility, a metaphysical Profundity, unintelligible to their hearers, and very 
specially so, to — themselves. These fall asleep at night over the lectures of Cousin, 
and walk in the Bois de Boulogne with Guizot's Philosophy of History in their 
hands. The Countess of , a political blue-stocking of the highest distinc- 
tion, said lately to one of our most brilliant authors of Apocryphal Memoirs, — " I 
love Guizot and Cousin with nearly equal affection ; or rather, the two complete in 
me a psychological and instinctive sympathy ! The duality of these great men 
becomes confounded in a complex unity, and enables me to comprehend the Infinite, 
of which Guizot has all the depth, while Cousin finely illustrates its extent ! " — 
" Might you not rather say," replied the writer of Memoirs, " and that without de- 
tracting in the least from their resemblance to the Infinite, that they are both 
equally inexplicable ?" 

The Political Lady whose thoughts are expressed in metaphysical terms, is one of 
those who have been unhappy creatures, sharply tried and shaken by the storm of the 
passions, and who has survived herself — because still demanding the stimulus of 
violent sensations at an age when they are unsuited to her constitution. Politics 
are to her a kind of love-affair : she throws on them the now paled reflex of her youth- 
ful warmth ; she is all enthusiasm ; she hates, she adores, this or that political person- 
age — this or that cause ; thus pursuing unconsciously a secret instinct, which is not 
always governed by reason, and is seldom accompanied by constancy. This woman 
is the poetically Political Lady : the seriously Political Lady, on the contrary, insists 
much on the free use of her reason — and boasts that her sympathies are fixed and 
constant. Politics are to her nothing more than the continuation of her last lover : 
to some, as to those old card-players, who turn pale with the dying tapers around a 
green-baize, they are altogether a last lover, and the dearest, it may be, of all. 

I have known two remarkable examples of the " Political Lady ; " — the first 
summed up in one sole nature the whole galaxy of Ministerial Egerias ; the second 
offered to my investigation the Egerias in Opposition. These two divinities, women 
of rank, rich, elegant, and reputed clever, exerted, each in the circle of her opinions, 
a certain influence, — a kind of sovereignty, political and moral. The first, the 
Countess of Regnacourt, had been what is commonly called "very gay" — that is to 
say, she had had many admirers, and consequently little constancy ; but, by a singular 



36 POLITICAL LADIES. 

caprice of fate, or rather by a wonderful foresight of the future, she had had the 
art, or the good fortune, to select her slaves from a certain set, among whom, 
Power, having once showered his favours, had established himself fixedly, choosing 
from its numbers his most indulged favourites. By degrees, then, the list of Madame 
de Regnacourt's lovers became a list of Ministers, Councillors of State, Deputies, 
Peers, and Ambassadors : her freedmen governed France, as in former times the 
freedmen of the Roman Emperors governed the world ; yet the fetters of these 
manumitted slaves were not so utterly broken, but that one end of the chain still 
connected them with their former sovereign, and brought them continually within 
the sphere of her influence, not now, perhaps, cringing and trembling as formerly, 
but all disposed to suffer, as the price of certain privileges, a species of control, of 
which they did not always fully appreciate either the importance or the extent. 
Madame de Regnacourt held in her honourable toils two or three of these " freed- 
men" in every Ministerial combination, and for each of these combinations she had 
always ready Ambassadors trained to the new system, whom she was to raise to the 
throne of Power. Madame de Regnacourt foresaw, with marvellous sagacity, all 
changes of ministry, — every variation of tactics among foreign alliances ; and then, 
with a promptitude and cleverness no less wonderful than her sagacity, she would 
change in a few days all the human furniture of her reception-rooms — to the Doc- 
trinaires succeeded the Tiers-partistes, to the Tiers- partistes the Dynasties, — and 
all these metamorphoses were effected without difficulty, resentment, or surprise. 
People who feared to travel the political road without securing good weather for the 
journey, first consulted the aspect of Madame de Regnacourt's drawing-room; and 
they seldom found the barometer mislead them. 

I never knew the husband of Madame de Regnacourt ; he was not a recognized 
part of her establishment : all I can say of him is, that he held, I know not what 
appointment, in, I can't tell which portion of the globe. No one ever named the 
Count de Regnacourt to his wife, nor did she ever mention him to a human being, 
except perhaps to myself, who was her confidant, because I was the only one of all 
the men she received, who had never thought of paying court to her. " Monsieur 
de Regnacourt," said she to me one evening, " is a very good man, mild and easy 
to live with, but he likes a quiet life ; his ideas, though rational and just, are but 
slightly developed ; he would die with fatigue and disgust if exposed to the bustle 
of politics. — " Confess, madam," said I, " that M. de R. is the very pearl of hus- 
bands." — " Why will you have me confess that ?" asked she, looking at me 
fixedly. — " Why ? Oh, merely because he is a desirable convenience." — " Nay, you 
jest at every thing," returned Madame de Regnacourt ; " but I assure you very 
seriously, that Monsieur de Regnacourt has many excellent qualities." — " I 
know that he possesses one, Madam — he is always absent." And I really be- 
lieve, that of all the qualities accorded to M. de Regnacourt, whether by Nature 
or Art, the most valuable in the eyes of his wife was the excellent one of 
never being in the way : it is possible that a husband's presence may throw his 
wife into the shade : one hates to see the vulgar better half of the goddess one has 
placed on a pedestal ; and the Political Lady, the Egeria of the 19th century, is of 
the number of those divinities who need all the illusions with which they surround 



POLITICAL LADIES. 37 

themselves, and with which we surround them. Madame de Regnacourt received 
few ladies, and rarely paid visits ; her doors were open in the evening to none but 
to certain initiated ; sometimes, indeed, her porter replied with the most imper- 
turbable coolness, even to habitual visitors, " Madame is not at home I" though 
a whole line of carriages drawn up in the court of her hotel, gave the lie direct to 
his assertion. The secret of this was, that there was then holding at Madame de 
Regnacourt' s one of those secret councils of Ministers, anxious for a clear under- 
standing among themselves on some important measure, apart from the presence of 
a too powerful colleague. Certain wicked wits, enemies of Madame de Regnacourt, 
called her saloons the ministerial Vendanges de Bourgogne.* She rarely appeared at 
court on public reception days, but three or four times a year the journals 
announced, with a mysterious importance, that the King had received her at a 
private interview. Did an event, fortunate or otherwise, occur in her family, an 
officer of the palace was dispatched to her, charged by an August Benevolence 
with the transmission of condolence, or of earnest congratulation : in short, Madame 
de Regnacourt was a silent and stealthy power — a sort of nameless influence — 
attached to the order of things for the time being, but stronger than all powers, 
independent of the different factions that divide them, — the Egeria of every minister, 
proceeding with each while he remained triumphant, but surviving them all. 

It seldom happened that Madame de Regnacourt accorded her protection to those 
who sought it : she preferred to select her creatures for herself, and to elevate them 
rapidly towards the position for which she designed them. Foreign embassies, and 
the council of state, were peopled with her favourites, but especially the embassies. 
These owed to her their most youthful and most active secretaries ; through these 
she received the earliest intelligence from all the countries of the world, for she had 
the art of rendering them all honourably indiscreet, without permitting them to 
perceive their indiscretion, so that none had to blush for his errors, or to feel any 
remorse on their account. Each of her proteges had compromised himself by a 
declaration of attachment, which she had possessed the power to wring from all ; 
the number of the called was considerable, that of the chosen remains a secret. 

If it happened that Madame de Regnacourt was present at some important debate 
in the Chamber of Deputies, the most influential orators approached to pay their 
respects to her during the intervals of the sitting ; and the next day, the political 
journals announced to France and the world, that Madame de Regnacourt was 
observed in the gallery of the house. 

To create for herself, thus, a sort of political royalty, — an existence apart, which 
caused her to be considered a kind of fourth power in the state, the Countess de 
Regnacourt had been compelled to renounce almost all the usual enjoyments of 
social life ; she had been obliged to sequestrate herself, to seal herself up in a cold 
and dignified importance, repulsive to friendship and the softer affections : women 
disliked, and men feared her ; but as the men treated her with deference, and sought 
to be noticed by her, the mass of people who fill the saloons of Paris considered her 
a very superior woman. To ministers, she was a sort of living protocol, a walking 

* Name of a French restaurant, where wedding parties are held. 



38 POLITICAL LADIES. 

tradition, a depository of secret archives, a link that chained the past to the 
present, and connected both with the future. 

When I first saw the Countess de Regnacourt, she appeared to me impertinent 
enough, dry, formal, inflated with her own importance, and having less talent than 
pretence. Her conversation, to which I listened attentively, seemed to me a faint 
echo of those that must have taken place in her presence — a summing-up of her 
newspaper readings of the morning : in a word, she did not please me. When I knew 
her better, I discovered in her more talent, less impertinence, and less formality : 
the scrutiny into her character afforded me a new amusement every day ; and when 
I wished to form a definite judgment with regard to her, I arrived at the conclusion 
that in this transubstantialized woman was no longer to be found, either the heart, 
virtues, or other qualities of woman, but neither was there the energy, force of 
volition, character, or potency of man ; whence it resulted, that the modern Egeria, 
worn out as a woman, incomplete in every way as a man, without heart, without 
reality, a species of political gnome, a martyr to her presumption, found an admi- 
rable prototype, as I thought, in that dog of the good La Fontaine which drops the 
prey he holds, to run after its shadow in the river. This conclusion was not just : 
one of my old friends, a keener observer, and a more profound judge than I am, 
bade me correct it. " Madame de Regnacourt," said he to me, " has first of all 
well eaten up her prey — ay, even to the last bone : nay, during her youth, far 
from being satisfied with what belonged to herself, she very frequently devoured the 
prey of others. Now-a-days, she is trying to change into realities all the shadows she 
can lay hold of, and she does not succeed badly either : she is no longer beautiful, 
yet she has still lovers ; her husband is neither a minister nor an ambassador, yet 
she is surrounded by an assiduous court of political potentates ; she is, then, at the 
very least, an extremely clever woman." A young scape-grace, who heard the wise 
explanation of my old friend, remarked, as he pirouetted from our presence, 
" Madame de Regnacourt ! Oh, she is the Mother Stork of every government ; 
examine carefully, and you will find all our statesmen nestled warmly under her 
wings." 

The Egeria of Opposition — the Marchioness of Divindroit, — unlike Madame de 
Regnacourt, had, to my mind, the air and character of a woman still young ; — 
lively and joyous, yet sentimental and romantic — for she had built up and demo- 
lished full many a romance. She had hosts of friends ; nothing about her repelled 
you, or inspired fear ; she was fond of change, of pleasure, but her admirers found 
that their hold upon her favours was slight indeed : she changed them with as 
much apparent unconcern as she did her gloves. It was antecedent to the Revolu- 
tion of 1830 that Madame de Divindroit transformed herself into a Political Lady ; 
the royalty of the elder branch had previously possessed all her sympathies, and war 
to the knife had been declared by her against the pretensions of the younger branch. 
Madame de Divindroit divided her time pretty equally between the pleasures of 
Paris and a magnificent domain that she possessed on the borders of Picardy and 
Artois. At Paris Madame de Divindroit received all the political leaders in whose 
creed she placed her faith : these were assembled on certain days at dinners which 
she affirmed the police watched with a troubled and vigilant eye ; she dismissed the 



POLITICAL LADIES. 39 

servants at dessert,and sought to convert her hopes into the realities she imagined to 
be close at hand ; she spoke of the form of government that ought to be adopted 
when her anticipations should be fulfilled; then launched forth into high-flown 
political disquisitions, and talked of " European interests/' for which she invented 
a new balance : these disquisitions she animated by her sole word, — she had eloquence 
enough for the whole party. To her most intimate friends she displayed dear 
letters — precious locks of hair ! ! " darling, inestimable documents ! ! ! " She had 
shares in the loans of Don Carlos and Don Miguel, and religiously celebrated all the 
fetes which the calendar of the new royalty had not preserved. When the King of 
the French put on mourning she wore rose colour, but appeared in mourning for 
all those which the new court of France chose to neglect. In her drawing-room 
at Paris were collected all the journals and pamphlets most vehemently opposed to 
the established order of things ; she received with open arms its bitterest enemies, 
those more especially who had been imprisoned for biting polemics, and those who 
refused to participate in the honours of the National Guard. Busts of the proscribed 
were the ornaments of her chimney-piece, and in a little purse of green silk and 
silver she kept carefully certain coins which bore a seditious impress. 

Such is the part played by, such is the conduct of, the " opposing" Egeria. During 
her stay in Paris she has political lovers, w^hose modes of thought she watches nar- 
rowly ; concerning herself with their religious affairs ; sending them to mass and 
sermon with an edifying strictness. It is by her influence that criminals are to 
beco me regenerate. 

In the summer, Madame de Divindroit leaves Paris to fix herself for six months 
at her seat. There, mistress and sovereign, she worries the mayor of her commune, 
torments the prefect of her department, puts clogs on the wheels of the electoral 
car, and is worshipped by the peasantry, whose misery she solaces, and whom she 
teaches to distrust the Government. Her flower-garden is filled with lilies*; she 
hears mass in the chapel of her mansion, and sings herself, with a resounding voice, 
a Domine salvum, that would make the police inspector of her arrondissement to shake 
in his shoes, could the sound of it but reach him. She gives two feasts a year to 
the peasantry around her domain — the one on St. Henry's f day, the other on that 
of St. Louis : on those days the neighbouring gentlemen are invited to dinner, and 
Heaven only knows under what terrible toasts to legitimacy the wine disappears — 
what sounds of sedition wake the echoes of the dining-room. 

The Marchioness de Divindroit has been involved in two conspiracies : for 
one she embroidered a stand of colours, for the other she made cockades from 
the silk of her dresses ; — she goes constantly from Paris to her seat, and from her 
seat to Paris, without passports, that she may not travel under the protection of 
Louis Philippe. 

Her husband, the Marquis of Divindroit, is a good honest man, with little wit, 
but gentle and accommodating — always kneeling in admiration before his wife, but 
pluming himself proudly on his independence, and the inflexibility of his political 
opinions. He sees, he hears, only through the organs of his lady, and believes only 

* Emblems of the old dynasty. f Name of the Due de Bordeaux. 



40 



POLITICAL LADIES. 



what she believes. The Marchioness of Divindroit has some consideration for 
him — she will have him, at all hazards, play a conspicuous part; and on the 
principle of the old game, placed behind him, passes her arms under his — 
which he conceals ; speaking words and making gestures of which he seems 
the originator, and bears all the responsibility. Twice he has been incarcerated 
for a too factious opposition; but so far is he from complaining of this, that 
she devised means to make him grateful for those days of imprisonment. Ma- 
dame de Divindroit is extremely well received, whether at Paris or in the 
country, by the "purest" of her political faith: she is a Political Lady in 
high estimation : her parties are well attended ; the importance she attributes to 
herself and her consistency is looked upon as a matter which seems indispensable to 
her neighbours, as incontrovertible, because she has resolutely persevered in closing 
her gates against all the " Vicars of Bray" who have succeeded each other within 
the last ten years. 

Such are two examples of Political Ladies with whom / have met. They 
have fully convinced me that the Deity did not create Woman for so rude a labour 
as that of Politics ; more than ever do I feel certain that the woman who will de- 
vote her energies to a study fit only for men loses all her distinctive qualities — 
all her graces — all her feminine beauties, — without gaining aught to compensate 
her for so many losses. Women have few roads to distinction : rarely does there 
appear an inspired Joan of Arc to wield the sword of battle, nor are the destinies 
of empires often confided to a heartless Elizabeth, or a sanguinary Catherine. I 
would not impose on all women the epitaph of the Roman matron—" Domum 
•mansit, lanam fecit ;" but I would much rather read on the funeral stone of each — 
" She died of too much dancing"* — than meet with many tombs like that of the 
Mistress of Monaldeschi. 



Elle aimait trop le bal ; c'est ce qui Fa tuee. — Victor Hugo. 



m i ,| i wits 

mm 







ggpp* 




THE LITERARY ADVENTURER. 



BY ALBERIC SECOND. 




jEAVING others to debate upon, or doubt the 
assertion, that Nature designed to limit the number 
of human beings to the extent of the means she 
provided for them, there can be no question 
that the world is just at present greatly over-po- 
pulated. It has always appeared to us, that, how- 
ever desirable it might be to feed the "little ones" 
of the sparrow, it was still more so to sustain the 
little ones of the human race ; and as we believe 
that Nature could never have designed an incom- 
plete work, it is our firm conviction, that when the world was formed, a certain 
fixed population was assigned to it, which man, had he reflected, or considered his 
own interests, would never have gone beyond. Reader, do you doubt this ? Peruse 
history ; look into tradition ; — what do you learn from them ? What but that 
mortals were greatly blessed at the outset of existence, — enjoyed, without effort, all 
the luxuries of life, walked through their appointed paths, as if treading only on banks 
of flowers — with no regrets for the past, no cares for the present, and no anxieties for 
the future ! It is true that now and then there chanced some disagreeable episodes to 
disturb the harmony of this picture ; but who, while delighting in the glory of a 
sunny morning of spring, ever thought of weeping because astronomers had said 
there were spots on the disc of the luminary ? 

Alas ! as time crept on, mankind increased and spread rapidly, gathering, as it 
progressed, like an overgrown snowball ; the flowery turf became deformed by rugged 



42 THE LITERARY ADVENTURER. 

and ungraceful footpaths ; each man began to struggle for himself, and laboured to 
push aside his neighbour. " Go out of that, and let me get in," became a fashion- 
able phrase, — and selfishness at length grew to be a sort of vital necessity — an uni- 
versal law ! How could it have been otherwise, when the smallest vacant spot was 
occupied by a host of rivals ; when every thing that was to be had was furiously 
battled for — from the portfolio of a state-minister to the seven- feet- square shop of 
the snuff- seller? — when there were twenty times more lawyers than suits to be lost, 
more painters than portraits to be taken, more soldiers than victories to gain, and 
more doctors than patients to kill ? 

Under the reign of the Emperor, when it was resolved, that to pass one's life in 
exposing one's self to death, was to gain a social position, cannon-balls made very 
serviceable vacancies in the corps of youthful aspirants,- — made them, too, without 
selection or arrangement ; but now that the war-mania is no longer the order of the 
day, there remain for our youths but two paths to distinction — medicine and 
the bar. 

Now, since, to succeed in these, one must inevitably traverse roads not always 
blooming with roses ; since, besides, they both overflow already with an incredible 
number of poor wretches whom one sees wrangling for clients and patients, with 
all the eagerness of an appetite sharpened by long fasting,, it follows, that 
hundreds of pens, nibbed to take notes from the lectures of Monsieur Orfila*, are 
used for rhyming elegies, and that many a note-book prepared for the digest of 
Monsieur Ducaurroy'sf lessons, has served eventually to receive sketches of a plan 
for a vaudeville, or to put down the scenes of a melodrama. The assertion, 
" Poeta nascitur, non fit," is one of those errors, that by dint of frequent repetition 
have acquired the authority of absolute truths. No, we are not born poets. Did 
you ever hear that De Lamartine made verses in his swathing- clothes — or that 
Chateaubriand saluted the coming of his first tooth with any other melodies than 
screaming and tears ? It is certain, that among the three thousand young men 
whom the provinces send yearly to Paris, that Minotaur of stone, you could 
scarcely find ten who visit it with the purpose of becoming authors. The great 
mass come under pretence of studying law or medicine ; and it is not until they 
have got well scratched by the thorns of these two sciences, and have spent the 
money destined for their college fees, that some fine morning, imagining themselves 
subjected to the secret influence of Heaven, they mount the pen, which is to be the 
courser bearing them to glory and fortune : — or embark in the inkstand, whose 
little black waves have suddenly become transformed into the golden waters of 
Pactolus. 

The advent of one Literary Adventurer being, with a few slight and unimportant 
variations, that of all Literary Adventurers, we will describe the progress of Eugene 
Preval, an Adventurer of our existing epoch. Ab uno disce omnes. 

Towards the end of the year 1831, Eugene Preval, with a full heart and an 

empty purse, mounted the Diligence, and bade adieu, for the first time in his life, 

to his family and native town of Chateau- Chinon. His father sent him to Paris to 

study law and refine his manners, with an allowance of one hundred francs a 

* Celebrated Professor of Medicine. f Celebrated Professor of Civil Law. 



THE LITERARY ADVENTURER. 43 

month — the said one hundred francs to supply him with food, lodging, washing, 
candles, fire, college-expenses, dress, and pocket-money. Three weeks after his 
arrival, Eugene had spent the revenue of three months, and had conceived an in- 
vincible hatred to every civil code under the sun. One night he was amusing him- 
self at the theatre of the Gymnase, where they were playing three pieces of 
Monsieur Scribe's. Chance had given him for neighbours two talkative gentlemen, 
and he had no better employment than that of listening to their conversation, which 
might be summed up as follows : — " What do you suppose Scribe receives for such 
little things as those that have just been represented." — " Oh ! he does not gain 
less than from five to six hundred thousand francs a year." — " Upon my word ! 
those scribbling fellows ! I thought they all died of hunger, or at least in the 
workhouse." — " What a notion ! Why, the cousin of the brother-in-law's uncle of 
my porter's godfather is the valet of a journalist, and he never receives his wages 
but in jewels and fine gold." — " Well done ! But what do you say ? — Suppose I 
take my third boy from the druggist to whom I have apprenticed him ? — suppose I 
make him a man of letters ? — though he should but get one hundred thousand 
francs at the first, it would not be a bad beginning ; let's consider of it." Re- 
turned home, our hero made a bonfire of his classical books, and exclaimed, as he 
scornfully glanced around his garret, — " And I too will be a man of letters ! " 

He awoke the next day a " Literary Adventurer " — that is, he employed his 
morning in blackening several sheets of innocent paper, and his afternoon in search- 
ing through the Paris Directory for the whereabouts of all the Parisian Journals. 
The day after, he entered on that path of illusions and disgusts, to succeed in 
which demands not only talent, but courage, address, cunning, flexibility, and 
diplomacy, — a painful road, that too often terminates in wretchedness — even when 
it does not lead to suicide ! 

Eugene Preval next day proceeded to offer his " Article" to the Revue des deux 
Mondes, which it declined on the ground that it was immoral ; then to the Revue 
de Paris, which could not accept it — " for it was embued with an ultra- puritanism 
worthy of the late pious Berquin himself." The Siecle found it too long, and the 
Courrier Frangais too short. The National considered that the ideas of Eugene did not 
square with its line of politics ; and the Presse declared his style inflammatory to a 
degree, and fit only for the columns of some rabid promoter of anarchy ! As to the 
minor papers, they were the servile imitators of their more eminent brethren i 
some replying that the piece was too tame, others that it was too cutting ; — these 
declared the ideas to be all of the most wearisome stupidity, and those that they 
were marked by the wildest extravagance . 

Two months passed thus, — Eugene walking not less than from three to four 
leagues daily through the streets of Paris, going from the Quartier St. Jacques to the 
Chaussee d'Antin, and from the Faubourg St. Germain to the Faubourg St. Honore, 
braving the cold, the rain, the mud, and enduring, without a frown, the often rude 
rebuffs of editors, and the impertinence of porters and reporters — a mis- 
chievous tribe, ever ready to molest the applicant who bears with him no authority 
to enforce their respect. At last, however, and in spite of the solidity with which 
his illusions and his boots were endowed, both — thanks to the rude shocks they had 






44 THE LITERARY ADVENTURER. 

had to suffer in the course of their career — began very sensibly to wear out. 
Eugene, far from being allured by the literary first-fruits that had fallen to his lot, 
began to ask himself, if it would not be more profitable to study the law, and then 
withdraw to some provincial town, where he might defend the widow and fatherless 
at the rate of three shillings a head. But one day, as he was going up the street 
of the Sorbonne with a melancholy step, his attention was suddenly arrested by the 
sight of a colossal placard couched in these terms,—" The Cherubin, a Literary 
Journal, appearing every Thursday, &c, price 24 francs the year — office, Rue 
Guenegaud." 

" The Cherubin /" cried our aspirant — hope reviving in his heart — " The Cherubin ! 
a new journal ! the only one that has not refused me. Let me try this one more 
at all events, before cutting my wings." He hastened to his rooms, examined the 
secret depositories of his desk, and discovered — Oh ! unutterable delight ! — that 
two crown pieces still remained in his possession : it was more than he needed at 
the moment, and dressing in his best, he set off at once to the Rue Guenegaud. 

The Cherubin was a small insignificant publication, the only distinctions of which 
were its being printed on rose-coloured paper, and never having required the services 
of a cashier. There is most probably no one who remembers the existence of this 
estimable journal, unless, perhaps, its unlucky printers, with whom, doubtless, it is 
still in arrear. The said Cherubin flourished at No. 23, in the Rue Guenegaud, an 
old house, of a cold, sad, poverty-stricken aspect ; and that which on the placard 
had been solemnly baptized by the pompous style of " Office," consisted of a single 
room, furnished with a circular bench, from which the stuffing had pretty nearly 
disappeared. At the end of this office was a closed recess, adorned by a flock-bed, 
on which slept in turn such of the editors as were not on satisfactory terms with 
their landlords. When Eugene arrived at the Cherubin, the whole editorial body 
seemed to have met by appointment at the office : it was crammed by some dozen 
and a half of young men, who were on the eve of revolutionizing the literary 
world, and of extinguishing at once all contemporary luminaries. Eugene re- 
mained some moments without daring to turn the handle of the door, so im- 
pressed was he with the idea of the majestic and imposing appearance they were 
about to present. At length, and by a convulsive movement, he entered the 
sanctuary, but his eye-sight was at once dazzled and his brain confused. Talking 
all together, the literary strength of the Cherubin was stamping on the floor, 
for the purpose of warming, — not the discussion, which was hot enough, — but its 
feet, which the absence of fire in the middle of January had rendered absolutely 
necessary. A thunderbolt falling suddenly from a pure blue sky on the Rue 
Guenegaud, would not have produced greater astonishment than did the visit of 
Eugene Preval ; — for he did not enter Article in hand, as you may suppose ; — no — 
he came the bearer of his six francs, which he laid with a noble air on the table, 
uttering these words, so eloquent in their simplicity — " Gentlemen ! I am come to 
subscribe ! " He had scarcely turned his back, when the whole assembly rose as 
one man, and hurried instantly to convert his six francs into chestnuts and white 
wine, which they eagerly swallowed to the health of the subscribing world at 
large. 



THE LITERARY ADVENTURER. 



45 



Now our hero profoundly reasoned thus with himself — " It is impossible that the 
Cherubin can refuse the contributions of its only subscriber; " — and accordingly, when, 
a week after, he brought his paper, it was received with absolute enthusiasm. From 
that day Eugene was admitted to the honour of beating the floor with his heels, and 
demolishing all and sundry matters in the office of the Cherubin — an honour which 
he enjoyed daily for a period of fourteen hours. We must, however, explain, that 
during the three months the Cherubin survived after its first subscription, Eugene 
had no opportunity of seeing even the ghost of a chestnut or the slenderest bottle 
of wine. 

There is one fact worthy of record, which proves how commonly things that 
promise marvels at the outset terminate in a very lamentable manner. Without 
referring here to the 1500 tragedies all hailed with plaudits at the Theatre Francais, 
and which are all none the less condemned to eternal oblivion, we will instance the 
"Article" of Eugene: — can you guess at what period it was ushered before the 
world ? Exactly on the day when the Cherubin bade that world an eternal adieu ! It 
is, however, better late than never ; # and our Adventurer, who had not closed an eye 
all night, must still be ranked with the number of the virtuous — for he joyed to see 
the sun rise. 

At length, then, he was a man of letters. Like others, he had at last his work 
"imprinted ;" but, what he had more than others, was a myriad of faults scattered 
through his whole work, the inevitable result of his inexperience in the matter of 
typographical correction ; witness a passage wherein he had meant to celebrate the 
devotedness of women, — but to which a very opposite meaning was given by the 
omission of a single letter. Apart from this little mischief, Eugene was the happiest 
of men ; — he carried thirty copies of the Cherubin to the post — there was one for each 
of the authorities, civil or administrative, of Chateau -Chinon : then he entered all 
the coffee-houses he knew, all the reading-rooms he could find, asking every where 
for the Cherubin, and not resigning it till he had slowly read over his "Article ;" at 
night, before going to bed, he wrote several letters to himself, with the following 
address — " To Monsieur Eugene Preval, Journalist and Man of Letters," in order 
to fix his identity well in the eyes and memory of his porter. 

The Cherubin dead, its contributors felt an immense void in their human exist- 
ence ; — some deplored exceedingly having no longer at their disposal that convenient 
rostrum, wherein they installed themselves at their ease, to harangue the crowd, 
which did not give itself the trouble of listening : what others regretted still more, 
was the loss of a shelter and flock bed, on which they might at least sometimes depend. 
In short, it was unanimously resolved that a new journal should be founded ; and to give 
solidity to its existence, it was further decreed, that the property of the said journal 
should, be created in shares : it was then that arose the Revue de France, supported 
by a society of contributing-shareholders, each engaging to pay a monthly propor- 
tion of fifteen, ten, or five francs, according to the extent of his pecuniary means ; 
those who paid fifteen francs had the right of inserting two or three times as many 
papers as those who paid ten or five. It was enjoined on all the proprietors, under 
pain of a solemn exclusion, to demand in every public place, and that with all 
possible uproar, the Revue de France, and if by any chance some villain of a waiter 



46 THE LITERARY ADVENTURER. 

should reply — " don't know it " — the said proprietor was to turn out immediately, 
taking nothing but a glass of water (without sugar), and a tooth-pick — in short, 
consuming nothing for which he would have to pay. 

Eugene, as a five-franc shareholder, joined the project, that was to be, according 
to the prospectus, a Literary Pyramid — that was nothing less than a twin- sister of 
the Cherubin, and that rapidly shared the same fate. 

Encouraged by two successes of such excellent augury, our hero proceeded with- 
out delay to the compilation of various anonymous papers ; and having heard that 
all men of letters in tolerable credit were more or less welcome in the reception- 
room of some celebrated actress, he bethought himself of making a choice, and 
wrote thirteen impassioned letters to the fascinating Fretillon, of the Palais Royal, 
with entreaties for instant reply : but the actress gave no reply whatever, and we do 
not know what would have become of our aspirant if, at the same time, and by way 
of consolation, one of the journals of which he was an assiduous, but ill-paid con- 
tributor, had not invited him all at once to enter the seventh heaven. 

From the day of his first embarkation in Literature, Eugene had felt himself de- 
voured by an eager longing that, like the robe of the Centaur, was ever more closely 
involving him in its burning folds : — he would have given ten years of his life, he 
declared, to have the entree to the green-room of a theatre : whenever he passed 
the door of one he gazed with longing eyes at the special entrance of the privileged 
and of the performers, murmuring sadly to himself — " open. Sesame." Now the 
journal to which we have above referred, bestowed upon him one fine morning a free 
admission to the Folies Dramatiques, appointing him to render an account of its 
first representations. Eugene was then living in the Rue des Mathurins St. Jacques, 
at the distance of a good league from the Boulevart of the Temple — the site of the 
theatre ; but this did not prevent him from being at his post during forty consecu- 
tive nights. They were playing at that time, 1 know not what wild melodrama — 
Eugene learnt it by heart, and was not long in becoming an accomplished critic in 
his appreciation of the company. Every paper overflowed with conscientious re- 
monstrances — addressed to Mademoiselle Alphonsine, and recommending her to take 
pattern by Mademoiselle Anastasie — and to Monsieur Auguste, entreating him to be 
less servile in his imitation of Monsieur Adolphe. 

One evening he was admitted, by special favour, behind the scenes ; he was beside 
himself for joy — his cheeks glowed, his eyes sparkled, his heartbeat almost through 
his waistcoat, not with fear, but with a sacred emotion ; one might have compared 
him to a young lieutenant in his first battle. He went dreaming of unbounded 
delights ; the said delights consisted in receiving a cloud on his head that crushed 
his hat — a cabin fell about his legs and tore them cruelly, — an oily moon set full 
on his back, — to say nothing of the blows of the scene-shifter, and the kicks of the 
firemen in waiting. At the instant of leaving this place of bliss, he lost his footing, 
and plunged headlong into the "pit of the wicked," represented by that same trap- 
door by which the villain of the piece had a moment before been swallowed up. 
That night Eugene lost an illusion, and found a sprain which confined him to his room 
for a fortnight ; — he employed this period in fabricating a vaudeville, such as, ac- 
cording to the manager, we shall never see again. The introduction to the first act, 



THE LITERARY ADVENTURER. 47 

among other parts, was written with prodigious force ; let the following passage 
exemplify — " The theatre represents a forest ; on the left is a tree." The managers 
of Paris had all, without exception, the cruelty to deprive the city of this remarkable 
work, — he of the Theatre Francais and all, to which last it was addressed under the 
pseudonymic of " Comedy." The recipe on these occasions is very simple. You 
wish to make a waistcoat out of your coat, — then you cut off the skirts : in like 
manner, Eugene pulled down the ill-built and loosely-rhymed couplets of his 
vaudeville, and converted it into a comedy. This check made our hero bid adieu to 
the theatre, and return to the journalizing path, where new and brilliant successes 
awaited him. It was now that he felt the necessity of surrounding his name with 
a halo of some kind or other ; and to this end wrote an anonymous letter to the 
editor of the Paris Directory, complaining loudly of the carelessness and ignorance 
that had presided at the compilation of the said Directory ; and to prove the justice 
of his assertion, he cited the incredible omission therein made of the name of a 
distinguished Monsieur Eugene Preval, living at Paris, in the Rue Monsieur-le- 
Prince, No. 78, and at the house of a wine-merchant! 

At this same period, Eugene desired to have some visiting-cards engraved. 
Making known to a friend the embarrassment he experienced at having no dis- 
tinctive epithet to tag to his name — adding, besides, that he was not ambitious, but 
would be content with the merest nonsense of a thing, were it even the title of 
Chevalier of the Legion of Honour — his friend advised him to get himself elected 
member of the Historical Institute ; and by means of six five-franc pieces, 
Eugene was elected accordingly. From this moment he had the right of absenting 
himself from its monthly meetings to discuss Literature and Geography ; charming 
assemblies, nevertheless, they are, — where some three dozen of people who have 
nothing else to do, meet with the sole aim of telling each other little silly apologues, 
and reciting dear innocent fables. 

Not content with these titles to the admiration of his contemporaries, Eugene, 
whom men began to inebriate with their vapoury incense, resolved one morning to 
make himself the satellite of some declared luminary. Finding Parnassus too steep 
for his little legs, and glory a fruit too elevated for his little arms, he adopted the 
resolution of hooking himself on to some person of celebrity, whose limbs were 
sufficiently vigorous and long to attain the one and gather the other. His choice 
having been determined, he wrote the following letter, bearing the impress of all 
the frankness and facility of which he felt himself capable : — 

" Sir — The reading of your charming works has long inspired me with the wish 
to express to you personally all the admiration I feel for you. Accept the assur- 
ance, &c. Eugene Preval, Man of Letters." 

Two days after, he received a reply, conceived thus — 

" Come — I am entirely yours. You shall press the hand of a comrade, who 
offers you his friendship and excellent cigars. 

n To Monsieur Eugene Preval, Man of Letters." 



48 



THE LITERARY ADVENTURER. 



One observation we make by the way : most of our great men smoke. Is it, 
therefore, that they so often emit smoke for the benefit of their readers and pub- 
lishers ? 

Four years have now passed since these things and many more such occurred. The 
wisdom of the ancients has declared, that by dint of hammering one becomes a good 
smith ; — you will not then be surprised if I tell you, that our aspirant, after having 
passed successively from journals paying badly to journals paying better, and from 
journals paying better to journals paying well, has at length, like his neighbours, 
achieved something approaching to distinction. There are few Parisian printing- 
offices unacquainted with his hand-writing. It is not, therefore, impossible, that 
the Publisher of the Pictures of the French drawn by Themselves may ask him to 
write a sketch — nor is it unlikely that Dantan will hasten to give him a niche 
in his Eccentric Pantheon. 




K 



X. 





THE MONTHLY NURSE. 



BY MADAME DE BAWR. 




N Paris there exists, and nourishes, a very lucrative 
trade for women, which, though in some respects 
fatiguing, is admirably suited to the habits of the 
idle : for idleness is not exactly the result of a wish 
to do nothing, but arises rather from a dislike to 
uniform and constantly recurring labour. Many 
an idle man would readily consent to gain his 
bread by running about Paris, from seven in the 
morning till five at night, who could never subject 
himself to the restraint of holding a pen for three 
hours consecutively in a counting-house : the difficulty to him, and that which he 
finds most repulsive to his nature, is the steady pursuit of a fixed and settled occu- 
pation. Witness, for example, those men, who, holding no place in any class 
of society, have taken up the " profession" of rope-dancers, street-jugglers, and 
so forth ; — " professions," which, well or ill, they exercise in the open air, ex- 
posed to all the hardships of the seasons, and often at the peril of their lives, 
when, with infinitely less actual exertion, they might become decent and respect- 
able workmen. To deceive idleness, it suffices that you give variety to the labour 
you impose. The trade to which I am about to refer, secures, to those who select 
it, a life the most varied that can well be imagined. 

Every month, and sometimes more frequently, Madame Jacquemart changes her 
dwelling and her bed (when circumstances permit her to sleep in a bed) : makes 
acquaintance with new faces, and finds herself obliged to study new characters, with 



50 THE MONTHLY NURSE. 

whom she must sympathise, if she desire to secure herself good treatment in the 
several houses she inhabits ? Fortunately, a long exercise of her profession has 
taught her to appreciate, at the first glance, all who possess any importance in the 
dwelling she has just entered for the first time : among the servants, as among the 
masters, she sees instantly which is the one she must set herself to gain over by 
nattering, or by that pliability of manner, in which her continual care for her own 
interest has rendered her an adept. In the same way, thanks to her habit of con- 
stantly changing her position, which transports her from the Faubourg St. Germain 
to the Marais, and from the Chaussee d'Antin to St. Marceau, she has learned to 
proportion her tone, her language, and even her gestures, to the step of the social 
ladder on which her employer of the moment may be placed ; — she is taciturn or 
talkative, imposing or simple, respectful or familiar, according to the rank, age, and 
fortune of the person to whom her duties for the time belong ; and he who should 
see her exercising her functions at the house of any one example taken from each of 
the various grades she attends, would find it difficult to believe her always the same 
person. 

Whether Madame Jacquemart has, or has not, a family and connexions, is of 
little consequence, since she could never go to visit them, or receive them at her 
temporary abode ; the most she can do is to pass forty-eight hours together, some 
two or three times a year, with Monsieur Jacquemart — for Madame Jacquemart is 
subjected, like every other woman, to the conjugal yoke : she was even in haste to be 
remarried, on becoming a widow, seeing that not only does she wish to find some 
one to receive her on the rare occasions when she returns to her home, but she 
cannot confide the care of her dwelling, and of the rather handsome furniture her 
two rooms contain, except to a well-assured person. She chose three days, there- 
fore, between an inflammation of the lungs and an acute rheumatism, which demanded 
her attentions, to espouse Monsieur Jacquemart, which Monsieur Jacquemart, an 
office-waiter of thirty-three years' standing to the Minister of thelnterior, established 
himself, thereupon, in the little manor of two rooms aforesaid, and comes every 
week to the address she points out, to bring her a change of dress, give her in- 
telligence of her little dog and her canary, and receive the five shillings produced to 
her by each day and night, together with baptismal fees, &c. &c. — a sum which he 
is charged to deposit in government securities, and which she invariably gives to him 
undiminished, for never has she occasion to expend three farthings.* Their inter- 
views, which are often interrupted by the summons of a bell, never last more than 
ten minutes ; they take place in the ante-room or entrance hall, and do not permit a 
superfluous word to be spoken : it will, therefore, be at once perceived, that they are 
not likely to sue for a divorce on the ground of incompatibility of temper. 

Madame Jacquemart is evidently deprived of all those pleasures in which many 
persons of her class so exceedingly delight : the public walks, the theatres, the 
dancing assemblies, are things of which she remembers to have heard spoken in her 
early youth, but from the enjoyment of which she is interdicted. Should some 
chance present her with a few hours of leisure, she takes care not to lose them in 
useless runnings hither and thither, but goes to visit those whom she calls "her 

* The days of a Nurse, comprising the nights, are always paid at the rate of six francs. 



THE MONTHLY NURSE. 51 

ladies," informs herself as to their condition, takes those to task who have suffered 
the year to pass without demanding her cares, and ascertains precisely at what 
period this or that person, among her customers, will send to summon her. With 
the exception of these rare outgoings, Madame Jacquemart dispenses habitually with 
the pleasure of breathing the pure air ; for were it in the heat of July she would not 
open a window, unless in the extremity of her "lady" fainting from suffocation. 
Add to all these privations that of sleep during a large portion of the year, and every 
one will be ready to say, " Madame Jacquemart is the most unfortunate creature in 
the world !" Such is, however, by no means the case, especially if, thanks to the 
protection of some celebrated accoucheur, she has arrived at the dignity of nursing 
M lady mothers" only. 

It is very true, that through many nights she may not find it possible to extend 
her person on a bed, as most of us accustom ourselves to do ; but she has contracted 
the habit of sleeping equally well day or night, and that whether on a sofa, in an 
arm-chair, or even on a three-legged stool ; nay, at need, she will sleep as she stands ! 
Thus the principal difference is, that Morpheus gives her her due in small change 
instead of paying her in larger coins ; and she suffers so little from this, that no 
sooner does one arouse her for the performance of some service, than she springs to 
her legs with a look as cheerful and ready as if she wakened up naturally after a 
rest of seven hours' duration. 

Breakfast time being come, Madame Jacquemart receives an enormous cup of 
coffee, well softened with cream ; this is one of the pleasantest moments of her day, 
for a beneficent fate has decreed that Madame Jacquemart should be the least in the 
world of a "gourmande" — gluttonous were too positive a term — it would describe 
her falsely ! Poor Madame Jacquemart ! good meals are to her an important com- 
pensation for much that in her life would seem to be disagreeable. Living always 
■with rich people, or at least with people in easy circumstances, she participates 
daily with great delight in the various savoury and nourishing dishes, with which she 
could not regale herself in her narrow home. All attend to her known predilections 
in this respect ; but if they did not, she would know how to compel attention, and is 
frequently heard to speak of the excellent house she has just left, for the purpose of 
piquing the vanity of those among whom she finds herself. At her dinner, her 
supper, and even at intervals between these two meals, comes a good glass of wine 
to lighten her spirits and keep up her strength : then she has her snuff-box, and 
from this she extracts, every five minutes, an amusement which gratifies her exceed- 
ingly, with the additional merit of keeping her awake : moreover, she has the com- 
fort of not having to pore over a needle from morning till night, as doth many a 
poor seamstress, for some ten-pence a day. But some will say : " I can't see in all 
this a single intellectual enjoyment." Patience ! Madame Jacquemart is no more 
deprived of this than any other reasonable creature, — only she must seek it in the 
contracted circle of her habits and modes of thought. First of all, Madame Jacque- 
mart is a lover of gossip ; and Madame Jacquemart is never alone : hence, to relate 
something, however little attention may be given to her, is one of her most lively 
pleasures ; thus she makes those around her endure many a narration, more or less 
circumstantial, of her own past life, or of the romantic events that have occurred in 



52 THE MONTHLY NURSE. 

the families amongst whom her days have been spent. She does not hesitate at a 
little exaggeration, or even at invention itself, ('twere harsh to say "lying" of poor 
dear Madame Jacquemart's variations,) provided she succeeds in exciting interest ; so 
that, for the most part, she adds to the satisfaction of speaking, — which, to her, is a 
very great one, — that of a clever author who exercises his genius in the relation of 
fables. Sometimes her youthful years are enveloped in a mystery which authorizes 
the most varied conjectures, and gives room for the most fantastic stories : "Early 
married to a thoughtless young man, she was left a widow, without fortune, and 
with four children, all in their earliest childhood :"or she speaks of her first grievous 
and prolonged confinement. In the days when her temper is darkest, is she tired of 
prating about the amusements of her youth ? — she transports herself to an hospital, 
where she is understood to have passed some of the best years of her life. All these 
mental excursions do not fail to throw a certain variety over her existence : she does 
not hesitate, then, to imagine for herself a past according to her own fantasy, and 
so completely does she identify herself with these dreams, that at length she believes 
herself to have actually suffered all she describes. Now, as a young woman who 
endures no pain, and is yet compelled to continue with her pillow, finds this but 
dull work, the babble of Madame Jacquemart is sometimes heard with tolerance even 
by her patient ; or, if it be otherwise, she throws herself on the servants, with whom 
she finds time enough to hold long conversations either in the ante-room or kitchen, 
or sometimes even in the lady's own chamber, where she talks in a low voice with 
the waiting- maid. 

As a consequence of her taste for narration, Madame Jacquemart is very curious : 
she knows that a great poet has said, " he who sees nothing, will have nothing to 
say ;" therefore, the day when a few visitors may be admitted, is waited for by her 
with excessive impatience, and provides her with much pleasant amusement. No 
sooner is a lady announced than she establishes herself at the window, knitting in 
hand — knitting having this advantage, that it can be left at any moment, without 
inconvenience ; there her eyes and ears are used in a manner so wonderful, that at 
the end of three seconds she is in a condition to describe every feature and the 
whole toilet of her who has just entered, while not a word of the conversation es- 
capes her : she makes her little reflections in discreet silence, approves or criticises 
what is said, and amuses herself with the scandal, if her good fortune contrive that 
any thing so pleasant should glide into the discourse. It is, however, only on rare 
occasions that she continues a mere observer of the scene ; for besides that, on the 
slightest question being addressed to her, she seizes the opportunity to reply with 
her usual loquacity, the baby must be displayed, — it is her office to make the visitor 
remark " How close is the little love's resemblance to its papa, although it is already 
obvious that it will have the fine eyes of its mamma," — with a thousand other 
common-places which she has been repeating through the last twenty-five years, for 
each individual she has seen enter existence, and which she could not dispense with, 
though father, mother, and child were all of the most repulsive ugliness. 

One other enjoyment of Madame Jacquemart, and doubtless the most vivid, if we 
may judge by the almost general inclination towards it of the whole human race, is the 
pleasure which results from the power to command ; for excepting the ten minutes of 



THE MONTHLY NURSE. 53 

the doctor's visit, when Madame Jacquemart lays down her sceptre and bends re- 
spectfully while receiving his orders for the day, it is she who reigns without a rival 
in the chamber of her patient. No one may half-open a door, light a taper, or mend 
a fire, till she sees fit, in her wisdom, that it should be done. However gently one 
knocks at a door, it is never softly enough ; and for this she will reprove the very 
master of the house himself. She suffers no visitor to pass without having first well 
assured herself that he is in no degree offensive, nor without entreating him to speak 
in the lowest tones. If the slightest noise is heard in the most distant room of the 
house, she rushes out in a fury, " to silence those people who are going to make 
her lady's head ache." 

The cares she lavishes on the mother do not prevent Madame Jacquemart from 
watching incessantly over the child. It is she who points out the place where the 
cradle of the newly-born must stand ; who prescribes the quantity of sugar to be 
put into the glass of water of which he is to drink a few drops ; who presides over 
all that concerns his toilet, sleep, &c. In short, she directs, she orders, she exer- 
cises absolute sovereignty from morning till night. Madame Jacquemart speaks 
with high authority to most of the servants : and while she can be very gracious 
with the waiting- maid, who seems to possess the confidence of her mistress, and 
with him whom she knows to have the care of the wine-cellar, yet is she most im- 
perious towards the other domestics, if they neglect the many precautions she is 
continually recommending, for the purpose of convincing them how important is 
her presence ; and her astonishment would be great indeed, should any one find her 
dictum unreasonable, when the matter in question touches " the life of her patient." 

Madame Jacquemart is not content with subjecting the servants only to her iron 
yoke: she extends it over the mistress also. Armed with the doctor's prescriptions, 
she never approaches the bed without some such command as that Madame must 
take a little soup, some particular beverage, or whatever else it seems good to her 
to order in her turn. It is well if, still dissatisfied with this semblance of power, 
she do not undertake, in certain cases, to point out some old woman's remedy which 
she declares herself to have seen work marvels. The observation that, " if it do no 
good, it will certainly do no harm," is the common exordium to this kind of propo- 
sition. Should the poor lady have the misfortune to listen to it, Madame Jacque- 
mart then adds the importance of the veritable doctor to that of her own functions ; 
and thus she doubles her influence over all that surround her. Think of that ! — to 
say nothing of her having an absolute passion for the exercise of the curative art, 
and being never so happy as when usurping the gold cane of the doctor. 

Take care how you speak before Madame Jacquemart of any one disease under 
the sun: she has suffered them all! — each and every ! On this subject, her know- 
ledge is inexhaustible. Not only will she discourse by the hour of such ills as 
threaten her peculiar patients, but of all the maladies that flesh is heir to. There is 
no disease for which our Nurse has not a cure ; and she would undertake the 
most dangerous, as well as the most simple, with an unshaken reliance on her own 
skill. Thus, in the house she inhabits, no soul can give himself a sprain, or venture 
on a cough, but she will instantly settle what species of bath he must submit to, or 
what decoction he must swallow. Then her memory is so crammed with anecdotes 



54 THE MONTHLY NURSE. 

of such miracles as are worked by leeches, infusions, fumigations, et hoc genus omne, 
that one might fairly call her a walking dictionary of domestic medicine. 

Madame Jacquemart is always anxious that the lady should herself nurse the 
infant, because her presence is then necessary up to the moment when she has suc- 
ceeded in well- schooling and drilling the nurse-maid ; and Heaven only knows with 
what arrogance she issues her orders to that unhappy tyro, who yet takes excellent 
care not to displease her in the veriest trifle, so essential does she believe the appro- 
bation of Madame Jacquemart to the security of her place. It is always then a 
great annoyance to our friend, if, on arriving, she find a wet-nurse already esta- 
blished, and this quite apart from the diminution of her fees at the baptism, &c. 
Poor nurse ! she is invariably an object of antipathy to Madame Jacquemart, who 
finds a thousand means of vexing and tormenting her the whole day through. If the 
child cry, " the poor little love is dying of hunger ;" should he take his food well, 
then " he is over-fed, — one must be cautious in feeding an infant, and the art is 
not to be learned in a day," &c. &c. At dressing-time, the same plan is acted on. 
There is a special talent needed for well swathing a baby, and this Madame Jacque- 
mart claims to possess in perfection. Here, then, she is again liberal of her counsel : 
" Take care ! you are squeezing him too much — you are making him quite red !" 
or, " Do take away that great pin there, close to his heart : why, 'tis enough to 
kill the child !" Then the poor young mother begins to tremble, and calls out from 
between the curtains, " Listen to Madame Jacquemart, nurse ! — Do exactly as she 
tells you." And Madame Jacquemart exults in the depths of her soul, and holds 
up her head with the pride of a General who has just gained a victory ! 

The consciousness of her importance never deserts Madame Jacquemart, but this 
does not prevent her from divesting herself, on proper occasions, of a certain re- 
spectful stiffness that distinguishes her manner, and assuming an air of cheerful 
benevolence. This metamorphosis is effected in the course of her transit from the 
palace of a duchess to the back shop of a tradesman. She arrives at the house of 
Monsieur Leroux, a fat butcher of the Rue St. Jacques, whose wife requires her 
help for the third or fourth time : she enters smilingly, and without ceremony, greets 
the shop-boys with a look of old acquaintanceship, nods at the little nurse-maid, 
and accosts the master with a friendly remark, — " Here I am again, Monsieur 
Leroux ! well, so much the better ; — that dear Mrs. Leroux ; let's hope that we 
shall get through this affair as well as we have got through all the others." Here, 
all proceeds simply, with round unvarnished phrase, and in good " hail-fellow-well- 
met" style : the gossip with her patient never ceases, for Madame Leroux is much 
amused by relations that give her a view of high life, that describe elegant ladies, 
magnificent hotels, — a thousand things in short connected with the great world, of 
which she could have no notion but for the details of her nurse ; and Madame 
Jacquemart fairly revels in the delight of pouring forth her store of histories, tragic 
and comic. She is besides in excellent temper here, exacts nothing, gives trouble 
to nobody, is always ready to offer little services in the household, and goes to the 
narrow kitchen to prepare her own coffee, " for you are not to suppose that I take 
the airs of a princess, because I wait on great ladies." The result of all this is, that 
Madame Jacquemart is treated at Monsieur Lcroux's like a friend of the family ; 



THE MONTHLY NURSE. 55 

she takes her meals with them, and is present with the guests at the christening 
feast. When they sit at their daily dessert of cheese, Monsieur Leroux brings a 
bottle of old brandy, which he calls Madame Jacquemart's ancient friend, — then 
what laughing ! what gabbling ! or rather what listening to Madame Jacquemart's 
gabble, — for she tells stories of every kind and colour, — what lingering at table, 
too, for we must not leave the renovating bottle in a hurry ; Madame Jacquemart 
will certainly not be the first to rise, and has taken care to make known how " she 
has left Nanette with Madame Leroux, and Nanette will give her whatever she may 
happen to want." 

In this place it is obvious there will be an absence of the thousand minute atten- 
tions usually demanded by ladies on these delicate occasions : not only are the 
doors of the house " slammed-to," with violence on all sides and at every moment, 
but the patient's very chamber is pervaded by the fumes of tobacco, which rise from 
the shop below, where Monsieur Leroux is often smoking with his boys. Madame 
Jacquemart bears all this with as much indifference as Madame Leroux herself — 
nay, she seems to think " these dainty airs belong only to a parcel of puppets who 
have nerves that support nothing." The truth is, that Madame Leroux recovers with 
wonderful rapidity, rises on the fourth day, goes down to the shop on the tenth ; 
and this day passed, Madame Jacquemart is at liberty to "up anchor," and convey 
her cargo of precious cares to other latitudes. 

The dress of Madame Jacquemart is always well arranged, yet she takes care to 
have it known that her toilet occupies her but the twinkling of an eye ; nay, it was 
always as quickly finished even when she was young and pretty : she favours you 
with this valuable piece of biography very frequently, and this gives you the oppor- 
tunity of remarking that her person, preserved in good case as it is, may still make 
certain pretensions to comeliness. Should you be so kind as to observe that " she 
must have been very attractive in her youth," Madame Jacquemart bows with bent 
eyes and a look of coquetry, for, though your compliment belongs to the past, it has 
none the less afforded her a pleasurable sensation. 

The intellectual exercise most agreeable to Madame Jacquemart is that of calcu- 
lating in her head, to what total the sum laid aside in the present month will increase 
her worldly possessions, when the proceeds of the coming month shall be added to 
it ; with this she joins the interest of all for two, three, or four years, according to 
the time at her disposal for this pleasant arithmetical operation. This calculation 
has the double advantage of occupying her idle hours, and of carrying her thoughts 
forward to that happy day when she may at length enjoy the fruit of her long and 
weary watchings ; — at these moments there is present to her a vision of herself, 
living at ease on a comfortable revenue, and reigning sole sovereign and mistress. 
Ah ! there will be the dear society of Monsieur Jacquemart, and both will be waited 
on by a handmaiden whom she will presently have made learned in the mysteries of 
cooking : won't she dine at whatever hour she pleases, — to say nothing of going to 
bed and getting up at the moment that best suits her ! — In short, she sees herself in 
the prosperous condition of a woman whose fortune is made. 

This dream of the future bears her up under all that her present state may inflict 
of painful or wearisome, insomuch that many years pass before she can prevail on 



56 



THE MONTHLY NURSE. 



herself to realize it. One engagement follows fast on another ; the wish of increasing 
her property — perhaps even a half liking for the strange life for which she has con- 
tracted the habit, — all conspire to lead her to an age far advanced, before she can 
resolve on seeking that repose which she believes herself to desire, and which she 
has as yet never known but in prospect. At length the day comes — she leaves 
the home of others, to dwell in her own ; the poor woman is going to rest her- 
self ! But what follows ? — Alas ! she arrives ill, to die the day after in the arms 
of that dear Monsieur Jacquemart who has not passed with her as many hours as 
would make up three months through all the years of their marriage ! — she dies 
rapidly, without much suffering, without having foreseen this termination to her 
labours, — and after all, she has enjoyed life quite as much as the man of genius, or 
the possessor of millions ! 




^^■J-^V-fc^ 





THE "RAP IN.'* 



BY J. CHAUDES-AIGUES. 




SHOULD I be so unfortunate as to be a member of the French 
Academy, I would certainly never take upon myself to sketch 
the portrait I have in view, for the very title of my subject 
would stop me short. The word " Rapin," in fact, is not 
to be found in the dictionary compiled by the immortal 
Forty. "Why, is more than I can presume to explain in a 
satisfactory manner, as I have never taken the trouble of 
studying the question. But, as such is the case, I intend 
to profit by my independence, and jump boldly over the tacit interdiction of the 
French Academy. Who knows ? perhaps the Academy, encouraged by my example, 
may one day acknowledge the grammatical existence of the word " Rapin," and 
give it the freedom of the language. 

In the mean time, in order to abridge the laborious researches to which the 
illustrious Forty* will be obliged to devote themselves, whenever it may be necessary 
to discover an origin for the word " Rapin," I consider it my duty, as a natural 
introduction to the subject I am about to treat, to propose beforehand three possible 
derivations, between which nothing will remain but to choose . The first was given 
me in the atelier of one of the most celebrated French sculptors of the day, bv a 
" model" who was sitting for a Centaur. 



* The u Rapin," has, we believe, uo equivalent term in English schools of painting. It bears 
nearly the same relation to the eleve in a French atelier of painting or sculpture, as a " fag" 
in our large English schools to an upper-form boy. 

I 



58 THE "RAPIN." 

I had been questioning all the artists present, anxiously demanding whence the 
word '.* Rapin" took its rise. 

" Ah ! parbleu !" said the Centaur, who had never opened his mouth for the last 
hour, " ' Rapin' comes from ' rat.' "* 

The general burst of laughter with which this strange explanation was received, 
did not prevent the Centaur from adding, with the most imperturbable sang-froid, 
"Ma foi ! If it is not that, what is it ?" 

This line of argument was conclusive, and admitted of no reply. None of us 
being prepared to offer a more satisfactory explanation, there was no excuse for our 
mirth . 

" But, my dear fellow," said I, anxious to get out of our embarrassment, " the 
last syllable, the "pin," what do you do with the "pin ?" 

It was now the Centaur's turn to burst out laughing. 

" The 'pin,' " he replied, " why, don't you understand ? rat qui peint\ — rapin — 
it's clear enough ;" — and with this he resumed his position, which he had only quitted 
for an instant, to look us in the face as he favoured us with his contemptuous 
answer, never once suspecting the enormity of the pun he had just committed. 

Several witnesses of this scene, after a few minutes' reflection, declared themselves 
of the opinion of the Centaur. And, after all, why not ? How many expressions, 
now currently adopted in the French language, owe their origin to some jeu-de-mots 
far less rational than the one just given. 

The second explanation of the word " Rapin," which I owe to a man of equally 
respectable authority, consists in deriving it from the verb rapiner, "to plunder" — 
an etymology which certainly bears no resemblance to the other, but which, con- 
sidering all things, is neither more flattering for the class it is intended to denote, 
nor, at the same time — to reason by analogy — more improbable. As for the third, 
— I give it as the expression of my own personal opinion — an opinion, moreover, 
pretty generally entertained by others. I believe that "Rapin" comes from "rdpe," 
worn threadbare. But, then, in the word " Rapin," it may be asked, what becomes 
of the circumflex upon " rdpe?" That is a serious objection, I allow; but it is 
not one that I intend to admit just now, for, until we have the verdict of the French 
Academy, every body is still free, if he choose, to write " Rapin" with a circumflex. 

After this digression, for which I am sure all grammarians and etymologists will 
pardon me, I arrive at last at my " Rapin." His age varies from twelve to eighteen. 
His position in society, if not one of the most brilliant, is, at all events, one of the 
most honourable. He is generally the son of a house -porter or an artizan ; he may 
possibly, upon the stretch, be the son of some honest and peaceable retired trades- 
man ; but it is very certain that he is never the son of a "nabob." Possible it 
may be, by some odd chance, that the " Rapin" possesses an "uncle in America," J 
and that one fine day he may inherit a plum : the case, however, is decidedly rare. 

* A French term of contempt, denoting, at the same time, misery and insignificance. 

f " The rat who paints." It is impossible to render in English this jeu-de-mots, the point of 
which depends entirely upon the similarity of sound in the French pronunciation of the two 
syllables "peint" and "pin." 

t The favourite " Deus ex machina" of the French comedy, who arrives at the last with a large 
fortune to render the lovers happy. 



THE " RAPIN." 59 

But, to commence the jDortrait of the personage before me, I must allow, upon ex- 
amining his face, that my " Rapin" is neither handsome nor ugly. He has eyes, a 
nose, and a mouth, and that is all that can be said for him. As to the shape of 
his mouth, the size of his nose, or the lustre of his eyes, they remain so many 
unsolved problems to the curious, on account of the very trifling degree of con- 
sideration generally entertained by the " Rapin" for water ! Let it not be supposed 
that, by such an expression, I in any way mean to intimate that he is a drunkard — 
far from it, for he is accustomed, doubtless upon principles purely Hygeian, to 
make a most immoderate use of water at his meals ; but the fact is, that except at 
his daily repasts, he looks upon water as a most useless and insipid liquid ; and it 
happens in consequence that there is no knowing exactly what to say respecting the 
delicacy of his features, or the tint of his complexion. But, after all, as there are 
exceptions to every rule, and I fear I might be exposing any exceptional " Rapins" 
to the reproach of dandyism or effeminacy, I think it wiser to descend from the 
general to the particular ; and, as I happen to be acquainted with a " Rapin" of the 
name of Theodore, who has a face as ill-washed as may be well supposed by the 
scanty indications above given, and who, moreover, morally as well as physically, is 
a " Rapin" in the truest acceptation of the term, it is of him that I shall make 
especial mention. 

Upon a head, of the nature already described, Theodore wears one of the most 
extraordinary hats that can be imagined, with a brim as extensive, and a crown as 
pointed as possible. That the hat was once black is an incontestible fact ; but, alas ! 
to be believed it must have been seen. In its present state the unfortunate hat, be 
it the effect of wear and tear, or of its upper coat of dust, is tending most deplorably 
towards a decided tint of grey. From under its broad brim flows a wild flood of 
hair, " the like of which no mortal eye has seen," long, tangled, and dry. It must 
not be supposed that any economical motive has induced Theodore to allow his head 
of hair to assume the extraordinary form it wears. Heavens ! no, — nor any motive 
of personal vanity either. This reason is a purely artistic one ; he has seen portraits 
of the most celebrated painters, in which the great masters were represented with 
their hair floating about their shoulders, and he can find no reason why he, — the em- 
bryo artist, who one of these days is to become a celebrated painter too — should not, 
by anticipation, adopt the same costume. There are other matters, however, which 
grievously embarrass him in this laudable intention. How willingly, for instance, 
would he send his neckcloth to Old Nick, in order to expose his throat, which there 
is no reason to suppose less agreeable than Raphael's : unfortunately, — fatal effect 
of early habits, — the want of a neckcloth is sure to give him a cold and toothache. 
How willingly, again, would he wear the original and fantastic dress of his fancy — 
of course in imitation of the painters of the sixteenth century — but, alas ! it is all 
he can do to pay for the simple and " degrading" costume, as he calls it, in which 
he is imprisoned. Of all the wishes Theodore forms for the perfection of his dress, 
— the only one, consequently, which he can realise at his ease, — is to wear long hair ; 
and he makes most abundant use of his privilege, without the slightest scruple. 
Should it be asked why, after all, Theodore bestows so little pains upon the coiffure 
he has adopted, and why, without descending to the delicacies of curling-irons and 
pomatum, he disdains even brush and comb, the only answer I can give is, that the 



60 THE " RAPIN." 

luxuriance of his head of hair gives him only very partial satisfaction. What he 
still wants — what he still desires with an ardour perfectly unparalleled, are 
moustachios, imperial, and whiskers — in one word, a beard. As long as he can 
pass his hand over his face without meeting with the bristly resistance of a beard, 
Theodore will neglect his long locks, and his coat will remain buttoned up to his 
chin, daubed with oil, streaked with paint, and covered with ashes in sign of sorrow 
and affliction. 

Certainly, to say the truth, the life which Theodore leads is very far from being a 
very diverting one ; nor is it one likely to throw a cheering influence over either 
heart or face. He is up at seven o'clock in the morning, and at a few minutes after 
seven at his lord and master's, the celebrated painter So-and-So. We have seen that 
the occupations of his toilet are not such as to endanger his character for punctuality. 
Arrived at his master's, Theodore puts the atelier in order, airs it well if it be 
summer, and if it be winter lights the stove, and, setting himself astride upon the 
flue, embraces it with his legs and arms. At twelve o'clock precisely, and at all 
seasons of the year, Theodore sets off for the Gallery of the Louvre, to make copies 
for his master. It is there that he ought to be seen, passing with disdain before 
the pictures which do not come within his master's principles of art, and flying into 
ecstasies, on the contrary, before those which his master has recommended him to 
study. At these moments, Theodore assumes a most knowing and important air : 
he looks out of the corners of his eyes, with. a shrug of his shoulders and smile of 
compassion upon his lips, at all those who appear to admire that which he disdains, 
and disdain what he admires. It is at such moments, more than all, that he regrets 
. the want of a moustachio to twirl up with a mien of cavalier superiority. His 
passing visit to the more important pictures of the gallery once gone through, he 
establishes himself before that which he has to copy. ' During the occupation of 
opening his box, trying his pencils, or preparing his colours, he still throws a few 
glances to the right and to the left, to see if, peradventure, some foreigner may not 
be taking him for a person of importance ; and when that is over, he sets himself 
to work with the most inspired look he can contrive to put on. Every stroke of his 
pencil is indicated by a movement of his head in the contrary direction. The energy 
of his efforts amounts to such a perfect fever, that one might be almost tempted to 
offer him the immediate assistance of a cooling draught ; and yet, in spite of all this 
trouble and fatigue — in spite of all the oscillations of his head and the shaking of his 
hair, when the time arrives for closing the gallery, Theodore has scarcely advanced 
a step in his work. That does not hinder him, however, from bestowing a very well- 
satisfied look upon his performance before putting it by until the following day, or 
from going home to dinner with as good an appetite as if he had been just completing 
a pendant to the Magdalen of Correggio. After dinner he marches off to the Ecole 
des Beaux Arts, where he works for a few hours before going to bed — and such is the 
invariable circle in which revolves each consecutive day of Theodore the " Rapin." 

Alas ! were all his grievances confined to that, the unfortunate wight would not 
be so much to be pitied; but his life is by no means passed in so quiet and complete 
a state of solitude as the above account would lead one to suppose. In the atelier 
he is surrounded by a host of sucking Raphaels, who, having passed themselvco 
from the condition of " Rapin " to that of " Eleve," render him in turn the victim 



THE " RA.PIN." 61 

of a thousand persecutions. He is their fag — their scrub — their slave, or something 
very like it ; and whenever it may please these good gentlemen to want a fresh 
supply of tobacco, or to send a letter somewhere, or any other dirty work done, it 
is Theodore who has to spare them the expense of employing a street-messenger. 
Be it to go from one end of Paris to the other, — what is that to them ? Theodore's 
legs were made to be used ; and he ought to consider himself happy when every 
separate master has not a separate order to give him. 

It would be the greatest error, at the same time, to suppose that, in return for all 
these multifarious services, Theodore is admitted to any especial privileges, or suf- 
fered, upon any odd occasion, to offer a few timid objections. Far from it : he 
owes these great gentlemen, the eleves, all obedience and all respect ; and for that 
very reason, liberty of speech is too great a privilege to be granted him, under any 
circumstances whatever. Dare to speak ! — Heaven help him ! — He knows too well 
the methods employed to impose silence, whenever such a fancy should possess him. 
At first, the slightest word which falls from his mouth is received with jeers — para- 
phrased and expounded — turned into ridicule ; and then, as the affair grows warmer, 
the practical jokes commence. His chair is jerked from under him, as he sits at 
work, and down he falls ; or his face is covered with paint and oil ; or his half- 
finished sketch smeared all over, so as to oblige him to recommence his work a b ovo ; 
or any other of the thousand practical jokes in fashion in the ateliers employed. 

Thus, should the unfortunate " Rapin " dare to raise an objection when sent 
upon a message, or presume to join in a conversation which does not concern him, 
the reply he may expect is bad enough ; but should he ever meet the annoyances of 
which he is the victim otherwise than with the most imperturbable good temper, 
and the most perfect resignation — should he take upon himself to fly in a passion, 
and bully in his turn — woe be to him ! The worst is still to come. The affair then 
becomes serious. His tormentors no longer confine themselves to the various kinds 
of engaging little jokes above mentioned. He is now seized round the waist by 
force ; the operation is conducted by three or four, or more, according to the re- 
sistance opposed ; the unfortunate martyr is tied at full length upon a ladder, his 
heels in the air, and his head downwards ; and the ladder is replaced against the 
wall, until the moment fixed upon for the full expiation of his crime of insubordi- 
nation. 

Another species of punishment inflicted upon Theodore, when mutinous, consists 
in placing a pitcher of water, or some other vessel of similar nature, over the door 
of the atelier, disposed in such, fashion, of course, that he cannot avoid a thorough 
inundation upon entering. This reminds me of the perfectly authentic anecdote of 
a circumstance which happened in the atelier of the celebrated painter Gros, and 
which I may be allowed to mention here. One day, Gros had invited two English 
amateurs to visit his pictures; and, without having the least idea that a "Rapin" 
among his pupils was in disgrace with his other eleves, entered the atelier, preceded 
by the two Englishmen, who were advancing with all due gravity of step, when all 
on a sudden, as the door was opened to its full extent, the noise of a rushing fall 
was heard, and the two strangers were covered from head to foot with a profusion 
of fresh water and bruises. Great was the trouble of the painter to make his guests 
comprehend, and still more to take, the joke ; while he himself probably drew the 



62 THE u RAPIN." 

following moral reflection from the circumstance, that politeness has ever its re- 
ward, for had he taken into his head to walk in before his guests, he alone, in fact, 
would have been the victim. 

In the midst of all these troubles and tribulations, it may be well supposed there 
exist no very frequent occasions for the favourable developement of Theodore's 
mental powers. It must be owned that, as far as concerns the independence, or the 
elevation, of his ideas, not much is to be expected of him. When, indeed, should 
the poor devil find time to think, drawn and quartered as he is between his labours 
done to order, and his state of " Paria"-ism, so full of vexations, unceasingly re- 
newed ? It would be no good, therefore, asking his opinion, even in matter of 
painting; for, as to what may be really called " opinion," he has none. His master's 
opinion is his, — so he says, at least, and so he believes. As his master happens to 
be a celebrated colourist, Theodore affirms that, of all the qualities of a great painter, 
" colour" is indubitably the most valuable and important. Leonardo da Vinci and 
Raphael he scorns ; the Florentine and Roman schools he treats with disdain ; while 
he shouts, " The Venetian school for ever ! — Titian and Paul Veronese for ever !— 
Those are your true painters !" Were the ideas of his master different, his opinion 
would be as completely different too ; and he would declare as energetically that 
drawing and expression were all in all in painting, as he now swears by " colour." 

Upon any other subject, Theodore's ideas are even still less remarkable, if it be 
possible ; for he has positively no ideas at all. Get him off the subject of painting, 
and he scarce knows what you are talking about. As to literature, he knows not 
even what it is. He is aware, to be sure, that books exist; but he hardly knows 
the name of any books of the most elementary description, and he has no conception 
of their possible utility. Between poetry and prose, I am not sure whether he esta- 
blishes any difference at all, unless it be in the length of the lines. After all, verse 
or prose, it is all one to him. He once found, upon the stove of the atelier, a volume 
of the Orientales of Victor Hugo, of which it was impossible for him to read through 
any two consecutive stanzas ; and another time, Eugene Sue's novel, La Sala- 
mandre, fell into his hands, and he was seized with a fit of yawning before he got to 
the bottom of the first page, — -two very evident proofs of his disdain for literature in 
general. Nevertheless, to do him justice, I ought to add that he does not possess 
so utter a contempt for the modern drama. The Tour de Nesle and Lucrece Borgia 
won his especial approbation ; and he told me the day after he happened by chance 
to see these two pieces acted, that he had found in them some capital subjects for 
pictures. 

If it be asked what Theodore's opinions are upon the subject of polities, I am 
obliged to confess my complete ignorance upon the point. I never in my life heard 
him pronounce a single word that in the least bore upon politics ; and I believe it 
would be entirely news to him were he to be informed of the Revolution of July, the 
accession of Louis Philippe, and the struggle between the prerogatives of the Court 
and those of the Chamber of Deputies. Were he to hear any firing in the streets, 
in case of an insurrection, he might probably lay aside his brush to look out of the 
window ; but most assuredly he would never have the curiosity to inquire for whom 
or for what all the noise was being made. Upon the subject of religion, the case is 
much the same. All your new-fangled religious sects are so many non-existent 



THE " RAPIN." 63 

theories to Theodore. He once happened, however, to see, at a hairdresser's window, 
a bust in wax of " Father Enfantin," the quondam chief of the Saint Simonians ; 
but, as there was no name attached to it, he took it simply for a fancy portrait, and 
found great fault with the composition of the face. 

Does love, then, form no feature in his existence ? Ah ! we here strike a chord 
which doubtless ought to resound beneath our touch, but which gives back only a 
dull and deadened note. Love, in its mysterious and Platonic sense, is completely 
unknown to Theodore ; and how, in fact, should it ever have been revealed to him ? — 
to him who has never heard aught but words of bitterness and irony, — who has 
never been able to deposit his sufferings in the bosom of a friend ? 

Among the various female models whom he has seen in his master's atelier, more 
than one, it is true, without his exactly knowing how to account for his sensations, 
has caused his heart to beat with violence. Poor boy ! Timid — habituated to 
humiliations of every kind — maltreated frequently before the very objects of his 
passion — as may be well supposed, he has not the courage to confess the feelings he 
experiences, and he supports this additional torment of his life in silence. There 
are moments, it is true, when the desire seizes him of conquering his weakness, and 
no longer concealing all that is passing in his mind, were all the ladders and water- 
pitchers in the establishment to be called into requisition to punish him for his 
insolence ; but scarce has he opened his mouth when he is stopped short by a burst 
of ironical laughter in his face, from the very object of his flame, and he then resigns 
himself to his fate with a sigh of despondency. 

He resigns himself to his fate, for he knows that this state of misery will have an 
end; and, in truth, were such a life as that of which I have endeavoured to sketch 
some of the particulars, — were such a life of torment, without compensation of any 
kind, to last for ever, he had better hang or drown, to put an end to it at once. 
What an existence is that of a " Rapin ! " To have nothing of one's own — to do 
nothing for one's self — to be loved by none, not even by a dog, for a dog must be 
fed, and it is all the poor " Rapin" can do to find sufficient food for himself — to 
be a slave, without even the privileges of a slave, without a slave's wages or a slave's 
rights — to live always alone, without even the permission to utter a soliloquy when 
another person is by — to stagnate in a condition of brutalizing ignorance respecting 
all men and all things, which have no immediate reference to the art of painting — 
to know nothing, and to will nothing — to receive only blows — to hear only abuse. 
What an existence, indeed ! 

A slight consolation for the " Rapin " is, as I have said, the certainty that this 
state will one day have a termination. The post of " Rapin" in an atelier always 
belongs to the last comer ; and the very day that a new recruit arrives, Theodore 
will be promoted to the rank of e'leve, and very different then will be his lot. He 
who, the day before, as we have just seen, was a poor boy, scoffed and scorned by 
all around him, will be all at once invested with an important position in the artistic 
hierarchy ; he, in his turn, will have a " Rapin " to send here and there about 
town, like a " nigger ;" he may enter into conversation with the fair models of his 
master's atelier, and smoke his pipe without any of the disagreeable results alluded 
to ; he will learn to know the literary works of the first authors of the day, from 
hearing them recited, with all complacency, by themselves ; still more . But I 



64 



THE " RAPIN." 



forget : it is Theodore's present, and not his future fortunes with which I have to 
deal. 

Let those who would convince themselves of the exactitude of the details I have 
given as to the " Rapin," visit any French school of painting, and they will not 
doubt of my impartiality. I have the consciousness of having neither flattered nor 
disfigured the being in question. Every one who has paid a visit to the annual 
exhibition of modern artists in the Louvre — and who does not, now-a-days, pretend 
to be a connoisseur in pictures ? — must have seen the " Rapin." It is on the first 
day of opening the exhibition that he likes best to show himself. He is at the gate 
of the Louvre by the earliest dawn, and must be almost driven out before he will 
quit the gallery. It is there that all who will may verify the truth of what I have 
advanced as to his dress, the important airs he gives himself, his affectation of 
assurance, and the nature of his opinions upon Art. 

I must not, however, terminate my sketch without adding, that the " Rapin" in- 
voluntarily follows the stream of regeneration which is bearing the age along towards 
a brighter destiny : he is in a rapid state of civilization. At the present hour, he is 
no longer so unwashed, so uncombed, or so besmeared with paint, as he was not 
long since ; and I have every reason to believe that Theodore's successor will, in 
that respect, as well as in many others, make grand strides beyond him in the 
" march of intellect." 





A LEADER OF FASHION. 



BY MADAME ANCELOT. 




in it from head to foot. 



UCXTENDED at length upon an easy couch, lay a young 
1 — and beautiful woman, absorbed in an uneasy reverie. 
"Is it possible ? Who would have thought it ? What 
is to be done now ? murmured she to herself. As 
she spoke, her large blue eyes were raised, without the 
least change in her graceful reclining position, and 
fixed upon a mirror so placed that the fair dreamer 
could not fail of seeing her whole form reflected 
She remained for a few moments in silent and atten- 
tive contemplation of those regular and delicate features, and that noble form 
of outline, the first freshness of which nothing has as yet changed. A profusion of 
fair and silky curls escaped from under a light morning cap, thrown, as it were, 
upon her pretty head less as a covering than as an ornament, while the ribbons, 
floating as they might, served only to attest the negligence which had presided at 
the morning toilet — that happy negligence, which bestows upon the mistress of her 
art such grace as to make it appear impossible for the most brilliant dress to add 
aught to her beauty. 

To see the languid air of sadness and despondency which pervaded the whole 
person of this young beauty, in general so stately, so imposing, so completely 
mistress of her every movement, word, and look, — those who knew her might 
have supposed her engaged in studying some fresh coquetry, some new expression, 
more graceful and captivating than the last. But no — the soft indolence, the vague 



66 A LEADER OF FASHION. 

reverie of her whole appearance were unstudied ; there was no art in her charming 
attitude ; and the power of fascination which she possessed at the moment, unknown 
even to herself, proceeded from the very fact that it was unknown, that she had 
for once forgotten to think of herself, and that all her movements, all her repose 
were natural — so completely concentrated were her powers of thought upon the 
one object of her secret uneasiness, which constituted the great interest of 
her life. 

It was something new to see Emma, the gay and brilliant Countess de Marcilly, 
whom Fashion had made its favourite divinity, thus triste, out of spirits, lost in 
thought — half reclining upon a sofa of blue velvet, which served to set off admi- 
rably her golden hair and delicately fair complexion — her head slightly stooping, 
as if borne down, in spite of herself, by the weight of profound and serious thoughts 
too heavy for her feeble force to bear. One of her long, white, flexible hands 
drooped languidly by her side, and was lost in the folds of the peignoir of white 
cachemere, bound round her slender waist by a silken cord and tassel, as if only 
for the purpose of attesting the delicacy of that elegant figure, the outline of 
which could scarcely be discovered in the ample fulness of her dress : the other 
involuntarily rested upon an almost imperceptible gold chain, which the fair dreamer 
had thrown about her neck a few minutes before, by a movement, doubtless, per- 
fectly mechanical, for she had never once cast her eyes upon the small watch which 
the chain supported, and which her fingers had caught and still retained without 
design or purpose. Had, however, the face of the watch, or those of the clocks 
about the room caught the eyes of the young Countess, it would have been in vain : 
she would have seen nothing. What was the hour to her ? She had neither a hope 
nor a recollection to recall, which would have made her heart beat higher. Emma 
had never loved but herself alone in the world, and, absorbed as she was at the 
moment by one idea, there were neither days, nor hours, nor aught else that marked 
the time to her. Her whole existence was bound up in what then occupied her. 
To gain the day — to triumph — every thing was in that one thought : there was 
nothing beyond it. 

For some time she continued thus motionless ; but her thoughts escaped, in spite 
of herself, from her lips : her words betrayed the secret agitation of her mind ; and 
her looks anxiously interrogated the glass before her, the involuntary confidant of 
her hidden fears. " Have I, then," she murmured, " lost any thing of my beauty, 
once so much admired ? Has any change, unperceived by my own troubled sight, 
robbed my face of its former power to charm ? Have I forgotten in my dress that 
art of elegance, which admits of all the grace of fancy without drawing too near to 
that fantastic irregularity which borders upon the ridiculous ? What is it for me to 
be beautiful, if not the most beautiful ? What to be admired, if not the most 
admired ? What to be remarked, if not the only one remarkable ? It were better to 
be first in a poor village than second in Paris." Emma could not help smiling as 
she parodied the well-known saying. 

" Yes, Caesar was right," she added. " He was the greatest, because he was the 
most ambitious ; and ambition is only man's coquetry." And as she spoke, the 
ambitious beauty wore the proud air of a conqueror, sure of regaining by the force 
of arms the power audaciously disputed by another. 



A LEADER OF FASHION. 67 

" What sacrifices have I not made?" continued Emma, as if to augment her 
courage by a recapitulation of her incontestable rights to the power which appeared 
falling from her grasp. " What pains have I not taken to ensure my triumph, and 
keep my place as a Leader of Fashion, in times when glory is so capricious, and places 
so difficult to keep ? Consummate tact as much as good fortune — address as much 
as beauty — calculation as much as opportunity, were all necessary. Had I ever 
listened to the dictates of my own pleasure, my own caprice, my own heart, I should 
have risked the loss of every thing. It is a power, like all others, envied, contested, 
attacked at every moment; and the reputation of afemme d la mode, like that of a 
statesman, is continually called in question and endangered. Was there not Madame 
de Merinville last year, who attracted the attention of the gay world for a whole week 
with her stately beauty ? Fortunately, she had so little tact or talent, that at the 
first party select enough to admit of conversation I had no trouble in showing off 
her silliness and overthrowing her empire at once — for without esprit none can 
reign long. Then there was Lady Morton, who might have contrived also to cap- 
tivate the capricious fancy of the world of fashion, had not her style of dressing 
been so extravagantly singular that it degenerated into bad taste. It was eccentric, 
to be sure, but without all grace ; and the simplicity of my dress beside her was 
admirably calculated to set off all the absurdity of hers. In France, if bad taste 
pleases, it is but for a moment. As for the brilliant Duchess de Romillac, she was, 
indeed, a formidable rival. Her rank, and fortune, and eclat might have borne off 
a triumph in this world of varieties — she occupied the general attention for a month. 
But she had the imprudence to lose herself with that handsome D'Arcy ; and, for 
B.femme a la mode, who should know how to make use of the most dangerous hopes 
only as additional weapons, and turn them adroitly to account in the interest of her 
own power, to love really, is to abdicate at once. My power fortified itself the 
more with all the lustre of my fallen rivals. Every danger appeared passed. And 
now," continued Emma, with an expression full of grief and bitterness, " it is she ! 
she! Alice de Verneuil — a mere country cousin, whom I received into my house 
when after two years' widowhood she came to Paris. It is she ! though far less 
handsome than myself, less elegant, and far less occupied with the endeavour to 
please — it is she who now attracts the eyes of all." 

With these words the fair Countess fell back into a state of the most profound 
dejection. For the first time she began to entertain serious fears for the loss of her 
sovereign sway. She at length felt that it was possible for the moment to arrive 
when she might exist without being the femme cl la mode. Until then she had 
believed the title so identified with her own person that death alone could deprive 
her of it. To live and not to be the first was not to live at all. For from the day 
that Emma had seized upon that inexplicable favour, so capricious, so frivolous, and 
yet so powerful, which the sceptre of Fashion bestows, her whole existence had been 
changed. All friendship had ceased. Other women were in her eyes so many 
rivals — the world only a theatre, where she played a constant part — and its plea- 
sures only an opportunity of display. Her dress was no longer the chaste attire of 
the modest female, nor the graceful adornment of the woman who knows that she 
is loved, and still less the negligence so full of charm of her who forgets herself to 
think but of another. All that vanity combined with magnificence, luxury, and 



68 A LEADER OF FASHION. 

wealth could furnish, at whatever price, were first called into action — then ideas 
of extravagant whims and fanciful refinement, in order to recall the flagging 
attention of a fickle world. In fact, every faculty of her mind, every hour of her 
day, was devoted to the task of fixing this fleeting power, as impossible to define as 
to preserve. 

For who can say how or why that Queen of Fashion, the femme a la mode, is 
placed upon her throne. It is not beauty, the only incontestable power of woman, 
that ensures supremacy, — for the most beautiful often pass unnoticed. It is not wit 
or talent, those invisible spirits, which controul all others, — for very often the idol of 
the day has none. It is not rank, that superiority which pride no longer admits, 
for the capricious goddess has never owned its claims ; and palaces have been 
before now deserted for the boudoir of a Ninon de l'Enclos. It is not wealth, for 
fashion frequently, without the least consideration, covers with ridicule the glittering 
gold, of which vanity makes such parade. There are no sure means for attaining 
to the pinnacle, nor rules for keeping it, when gained. 

Every effort was, consequently, employed by Emma to succeed, and, uncertain 
of the causes of her favour, she left no means untried. Relations — friends — fortune 
— every thing was sacrificed to this insatiable desire of display. Pride, vanity, and 
egotism had destroyed all tenderness, sensibility, and affection in her. And were Emma 
to have lost her title as femme a la mode, what would have then been left to her ? 
Her mind was lost in endless reflections. Never did Cabinet, with a prospect of 
defeat from a doubtful majority before its eyes, plunge into so vast a field of 
conjecture as to the causes of the downfal feared or the triumph yet to be obtained : 
.never did her fertile imagination suggest to Emma more abundant means for 
reducing her rebel subjects to allegiance — more coups d'etat to startle the curious 
novelty-hunters of the day — more trifling favours, — which she could bestow without, 
however, compromising her dignity, — upon the more refractory. 

" In our morning drive, at our ball at night, how they surround her, one and all," 
pursued Emma. " Even to the Count de Prades, who has eyes for none but her — 
he, the disdainful, whom all the women have sought to captivate in vain — he, who 
has always worn that air of indifference and ennui, which never fails to excite the 
curiosity and coquetry of our sex : for how, indeed, is the pleasure to be resisted of 
attempting to succeed where all have failed, of striving to gain the love of one who 
loves nothing beyond himself, of endeavouring to divert a mind from the all-ab- 
sorbing influence which appears to divert it from all else ? It is a task worthy the 
most bold and enterprising. To carry off a man from the affections of another 
woman, is a mere nothing : but to carry himself off from his own self-love, or from 
some unknown souvenir, to triumph over a rival of whom one can say no ill — to do 
the impossible in fact — that is indeed a triumph which repays the pains bestowed. 
It is an aim worth the effort — and this aim Alice has attained without an effort, and 
unknown even to herself. All the world has observed the marked attentions of the 
Count. She alone appears not to remark it. She appears even to avoid him : and 
it is exactly that, which makes them all so eager to join in the chace." 

Emma remained again lost in a labyrinth of conjecture. For upon the homage 
of two or three heroes of fashion depends the place assigned to a woman in society ; 
and it had been she who had attracted to her feet all those who thus dispose of 



A LEADER OF FASHION. 69 

fortune's favours, until the moment when Alice came, obtained the exclusive atten- 
tion of the Count de Prades, and thus soon found the general admiration directed to 
herself. 

The fair dreamer never stirred. So absorbed in thought was she, that it was as 
if startled from a heavy sleep that she at last exclaimed, with a movement of the 
liveliest surprise, " Ah ! Alice ; are you there ? " 

Before her stood Madame de Verneuil, a charming brunette, with a face full of 
animation and expression, who answered, smiling, " Well, and did you not expect 
me for our morning's drive ?" — and she examined with surprise the complete undress 
of Emma's attire, which either announced a total forgetfulness of their arrange- 
ments, or a change of plan. 

" You counted upon my going, did you ? and you counted also, without doubt, 
upon our meeting Monsieur de Prades ?" 

The expression of the Countess, as she spoke, was stamped with the bitterest 
disdain. Alice never answered, and when Emma saw her quietly sitting down, as 
if giving up all thoughts of going out, she felt the most violent inclination to quarrel 
with her. 

" Since you are so fond of the world and its places of assembly," she pursued, 
" why, I should like to know, did you imagine a pretext for not appearing at my 
last night's party, where all that is most brilliant in Paris was collected ? " 

Alice only smiled. 

" You refuse, too, to vouchsafe me a reply, it would seem," added the Countess, 
with impatience, after a moment's silence. 

Madame de Verneuil remained some moments longer without an answer, but the 
eyes of Emma were fixed upon her with a look of such sharp inquiry, that she ended 
by replying, with a smile, " I was unwell — really unwell, — and then — " 

" And then — what ? " demanded the Countess, almost angrily. 

" Since you insist upon it, I will tell you all," replied Alice, archly ; " I will tell 
you every thing ; — but you must not be vexed. I own I cannot understand your 
fashionable parties, where pleasure looks so like ennui that I fear to mistake one 
for the other. The lady of the house invites, it is true, the prettiest and most 
charming women of the day, and then places them, dressed to admiration and bored 
to death, around the room, like so many family portraits ; and there they sit and 
listen, with more or less attention, to a concert, more or less worth hearing, for 
which they never care the least. During all this time their male acquaintances are 
banished to the other rooms, or posted where they cannot interchange a word with 
them, and either talk among themselves or to the mistress of the house, who, obliged 
as she is to do the honours at home, and receive every one with a few words of 
politeness, is the only lady circulating among the crowd of gentlemen who fill the 
rooms. She alone is amused. She alone displays her wit, gaiety, and grace, while 
all her lady guests seem to serve only as a scenic decoration to a comedy, which 
she acts all alone for the benefit of her own vanity. The brilliant f4te t in fact, to 
which she invites them, looks more like a trap set to ensnare them, than a proffered 
pleasure. As for me, if I fly your amusements <X la mode, it is because I like to be 
amused." 

Emma raised her eyes, with a look of malicious intelligence, to the face of Alice ; 



70 A LEADER OF FASHION. 

and the two looked at one another with a smile, like those Roman augurs of old, 
who believed only in two things — their own address, and the credulity of others. 

" Am I not right ?" resumed the Countess gaily, with the confidence naturally 
produced by the certainty of being understood ; " and the world only admires those 
who in return care not for the world. But," she continued, " what have I done 
more than others have done before me ? Has not pre-eminence being always and 
everywhere disputed ? As soon as two men existed upon the face of the earth, one 
killed the other in order to remain the first. From that time downwards there 
never has been a triumph without its victims. And, if I do immolate a few other 
vanities at the shrine of my own, where is the mighty evil ? 

" After all," pursued Emma, in a more marked way, " there are some women, 
who, however desirous of pleasing all, would gladly reign exclusively in the heart 
of one alone ; — and if Alice did not choose to make her appearance at my party, it was 
probably because she knew that a certain person was not to be there," she added, 
in a bantering tone, which took Madame de Verneuil off her guard, and made her 
reply hastily, " If I had known it, on the contrary, I should have probably decided 
upon coming." 

There was a moment's silence. Alice blushed in uneasy embarrassment at the 
blunder she had just committed ; and Emma felt and knew that a secret existed, 
and guessed at once the advantage which might probably be taken of it. 

" I have mentioned no names," she said with a laugh ; " but it appears that the 
Count de Prades is so perpetually in your thoughts that his name answers instantly 
to a question asked of your heart." 

" What nonsense," said Alice, bursting out into a laugh, " I, who avoid him 
everywhere " 

" We only fly from those we fear," resumed the Countess ; "we only fear 
either from love or hate." 

But Alice listened no longer. She was hunting about for some object or other 
impossible to be found. And so Emma, after having placed herself so exactly 
before the glass that she could follow with her eyes every movement of Alice round 
the room, continued, with an air of malicious indifference, while she played with the 
tassels of the cord round her waist, — 

" The Count de Prades is handsome, and what is more, witty and clever — a rarity 
in a man of fashion, as times go. Your men of talent now-a-days lavish their 
eloquence on politics, and not on women ; and society loses considerably on 
the one side, without gaining much on the other. But so it is. So, when a 
man of talent, with a personal appearance of any tolerable merit, is left us, Heaven 
knows how we spoil him ; and Monsieur de Prades is the most spoiled of all. Is he 
not?" 

Alice answered not ; and the Countess, without paying any attention to her 
silence, still went on : — 

" Accustomed, as he has been, from his earliest youth to admiration, he affects to 
despise it : used to all the coquettish arts of women, he pretends to be above them : 
spoiled, perhaps, by a lavish display of the tenderest affections, he would give us to 
believe that he is insensible to them all. Your men of fashion have so many 
ill-founded pretensions ; and he among the number " 



A LEADER OF FASHION. Jl 

Alice was still employed in something at the other end of the room ; but the dis- 
dainful tone of Emma seemed to wound her feelings, for she interrupted her 
rivacity by saying, " Certainly, affectation cannot be laid to the charge of the Count 
de Prades — his frankness — his high sense of honour — his truth — " 

She stopped, for she felt that she was going much too far in her praises of a man 
whom she designedly avoided. 

" Perhaps so," resumed her friend, without choosing to remark her manner, " for 
he has proved at least that he is capable of a strong and durable attachment ; and 
his indifference to all around him proceeds from his regret for what he has once lost. 
I know for certain that he has loved — still loves a woman, beautiful and every way 
worthy of his love." 

All Emma's efforts were at this moment vain to catch a glimpse of the face of 
Alice, who turned her back to the glass, and was bending over a table, covered with 
different engravings. And so she resumed the subject of this unknown and all- 
absorbing attachment, — now stopping for a moment, now going on, interrogating 
Alice, who replied in a few vague words. 

At last, after a short silence, the Countess rose, and glided, with noiseless step, 
upon the thick carpet behind Alice, who was bending over the drawings, which she 
affected to examine, and was mechanically uttering the words, " And so you 
think . . . " — when she felt herself seized round the waist. 

It was Emma, who answered, laughing, ' ' I think, Alice — I think, — that you are 
in love with the Count de Prades." 

Alice, turning suddenly round towards the light, in the first involuntary move- 
ment of surprise, discovered her pretty face all red and agitated, and moist with 
tears, and suffered a cry of astonishment and fright to escape her, which was echoed 
by a cry of joy from Emma ; for she knew that the woman in whom a feeling of 
love and regret could excite a tear, was no rival for a coquette. 

She led her friend to the sofa on which she had been reclining, made her sit down 
by her side, and tried to win her confidence by expressions of kindness and affection. 
After a few of those useless words, — those phrases half commenced and left un- 
finished, and demi- confidences, which so generally precede a full confession, Alice 
at last commenced : — 

" About four years ago, before I was married, I was at Baden with my aunt, 
where I became acquainted with the Count de Prades. During six weeks he never 
quitted us. I felt so happy when he was by my side that I thought he loved me. 
I confided all my feelings to my aunt the very day preceding that of our departure ; 
and the same evening she took occasion to speak before him and me of affection, and 
tenderness, and ties of attachment — I scarce know what. It was for the purpose 
of discovering the Count's intentions. How little did his ideas respond to her 
expectations and to mine ! He ridiculed all serious affections and real feelings of 
the heart, pretended that it was impossible for him ever to know anything of the 
kind, and showed himself in fact as he really was — cold, indifferent, and satirical. 
Stung to the quick by his tone of mockery, I did not even choose to let him know 
of our departure. We quitted Baden the following day. My father awaited our 
return to Paris with a suitable match for me. The marriage was already settled. 
It was no longer possible for me to love ; but I obeyed my father, and a fortnight 



72 A LEADER OF FASHION. 

afterwards became the wife of Monsieur de Verneuil. I left immediately for the 
country, determined never to return to Paris. I trembled to see him again, for he 
had too much tact and knowledge of the world not to have divined I loved him. 
Heaven never blessed my married life. I was unhappy. Monsieur de Verneuil's 
death has left me free, but without a hope of happiness. I hesitated for two years 
before I determined on revisiting Paris — and I was right, Emma. But now I quit 
it again to-morrow, never to return." 

Emma gazed upon her as she spoke, with interest, for the face of Alice wore so 
touching an expression of tenderness, that she almost envied feelings which even 
in sorrow could be so becoming. 

" Four years ago !" she exclaimed, as if speaking to herself. " I remember this 
journey to Baden, whence he returned so sad. He never went back again ; — was 
agitated once when I spoke to him of that time ; — when Alice came and he saw her 
again, he was much affected — and since then his eyes have never left her." 

" Has he never spoken to you of your stay at Baden ?" inquired Emma, turning 
to Madame de Verneuil, " or of your marriage ?" 

"Never!" replied Alice. " I have never seen him but in company. Once, 
indeed, he seemed to seek me, but he appeared at the same time to have forgotten 
the past." 

Emma rose hastily, rang the bell, and asked the servant, who entered, whether 
any one had called. 

" Monsieur de Prades has this moment asked whether he could be admitted." 

" Let him come in." 

As soon as the Count had made his appearance and his bow, Emma begged to 
be excused, on the score of having still to dress, and, requesting her friend to do 
the honours in her place, left the apartment. 

"Ah! ah!" she repeated gaily at her toilet; " they are alone, and love is a 
better tactician even than I." 

When she returned into the room, they heard her not. Alice was seated near the 
lire, and the Count was standing, leaning on the mantle-piece. Although alone, 
they were speaking so low that none but lovers could have heard each other. 

A month afterwards, Emma gave one of those fdtes to which Alice had alluded. 
Her rooms were glittering with new and fanciful decorations, and resplendent 
with the gayest fashions. Never was party more rich in celebrities and lions 
of every kind : never was the mistress of the house more striking or exclusive in 
her elegance. No one spoke of Madame de Verneuil : she had married, the day 
before, the Count de Prades, and had left with him for Italy. They were happy, 
and forgot the world, who forgot them in return. 

The Countess de Marcilly, reinstated, for a time at least, in her empire, 
continued to watch over it as every sovereign should do, who would maintain his 
crown, be it a diadem of gold or a wreath of flowers. To be supreme, com- 
prised her whole existence ; and so we have not said a word, either of her husband, 
or her family, or her friends. What woman ever possesses any thing of the kind 
when she is nfemme ci la mode ? 




THE PHYSICIAN. 



BY L. ROUX. 




OT to believe, in " the Doctor" is a venial heresy ; to doubt 
of the Science were to walk in the steps of Don Juan ; but 
even in an age so matter-of-fact as the present, scepticism 
will hardly proceed so far. 

One era in the life of a Physician is problematical enough. 
Furnished with his diploma, he yet but half exists : it is in 
medicine that he puts his trust ; but having a title does not 
suffice to make him believe that he is established. The patient 
being as yet a mythos, and the whole human race seeming 
obstinately determined on continuing in wonderful health, he might easily be tempted 
to turn astronomer while waiting for practice. However, come what may, he makes 
a beginning. 

The Physician aspirant goes to visit the Deputy for his Department. Now, to 
guide the first steps of a young Physician, and to take his professional advice, is to 
the man of the Palais Bourbon* a necessary appendage to his legislative functions : 
the Chamber of Peers receives its Physicians all primed from the hands of its younger 
sister, together with its projects of law. Strongly recommended, besides, to a 
confrere already in full practice, the embryo practitioner pays him a visit, and re- 
ceives from him a patient by way of encouragement, — it being well understood that 



The Palace of the French Charaber of Deputies. 



74 THE PHYSICIAN. 

this fortunate patient is to be cured for humanity's sake, — and he takes care not to 
fail, for the sake of his own reputation. This is the beaten road — an idea that would 
occur to every one — a precaution too obvious to be neglected by the least inspired 
of debutants ; but success demands something more. To be a Physician, it is suffi- 
cient that you need only use certain received methods ; to become celebrated, you 
must have a method peculiar to yourself. 

To go afoot, when you have renown for your end, is to resolve on arriving late at 
the goal, or rather on not arriving at all ; consequently you set up a carriage. You 
had a new coat, but you add to this a cloak of the most expensive fashion ; you were 
living on a third floor, you promote yourself to a first ; your rich patients in prospect 
will pay for it, your sick folks will but take you half way. Next, you furnish a 
splendid apartment, and hang up in your cabinet an engraving of Hippocrates refusing 
the presents of Artaxerxes, that you may say, without affronting your conscience, 
" In my house you will find a disinterested Physician." But you are unknown. No 
matter ! — Nay, that is an advantage : everything is to be gained from the moment 
there is nothing to lose ; patients are waiting for health, just as you are waiting 
for — sickness ; that which others would scarcely dare to attempt, lest they should 
compromise their reputations, may be coolly executed by him who has yet the whole 
of his credit to make. Have you few patients ? — This is the moment for concen- 
trating all your cares upon one — for pursuing your ideal of the perfect in medical 
science — for exhibiting, in your own proper person, precisely what a Doctor should 
be. You are he who arrives at the very moment fixed on, who gives a good quarter 
of an hour to each patient, who tests with minute attention the quantity of drugs 
• sent in by the apothecary, examines carefully all results, pronounces on these as 
being more or less satisfactory, sits up whole nights at need, applies leeches, follows 
a disease into the country, and gives gratuitous advice to the servants of the house. 
There is no kind of venesection that revolts the Physician aspirant : he does not 
even recoil from bleeding himself, pecuniarily speaking. He will sell a " freehold" 
to buy a practice ; for is not a good round of practice a freehold ? — Assuredly, and 
it is often bought ready made. 

One sure means of creating a practice is that of presupposing its existence. Many 
physicians begin by being celebrated, that they may compass being known. Give 
your neighbours a good waking-up, and that often ; let people come to call you at 
every hour of the night, in the name of whatever Duchess you please, — you can 
find enough in the Red Book and Court Guide ; let the health of the whole Faubourg 
St. Germain depend, if possible, on one of your minutes ; let a file of emblazoned 
carriages take their station at your door. — Hurry, hurry ! be alive ! footmen, horse- 
men, tigers of all heights, liveries of all colours, at your gates ! — Let them make a 
long string before your door; make them scuffle for admission as at the melodramas. 
Do this, and the shadow is your own, — be assured that the reality is close at hand ! 
The Physician must patronize the periodical press, as a means of publicity. If he 
can manage to set up a journal of the medical sciences — surgical, medico-surgical, 
or surgico-medical — the business is done. He has laid the foundation of unlimited 
fame : this will be to him the lever of Archimedes, and science shall not make a 
step without craving his permission ; there does not exist the malady that has not 



THE PHYSICIAN. *]o 

appeared in his Gazette ; young physicians seek his support, elder ones treat him 
with deference ; all fear him, for he is capable of giving a fever to the Faculty itself. 

Do you fancy that the Dictionary of the Medical Sciences comprehends all the 
secrets of the medical art? — A physician of some talent, tired of waiting for practice, 
or, in plain words, for fortune, set himself to plant tulips : they came up admirably. 
He had instantly a practice in full flower; all the world flocked to see his collection of 

tulips ; all the world found out that, in the matter of horticulture, Dr. was 

an excellent physician. Another owes his reputation to a gallery of apocryphal 
paintings, authenticated by the kind testimony of all the celebrated men of the four 
parts of the world. Inoffensive and benevolent supporters they are, and with more 
genius than one might suppose : they make a Titian or a Raphael at their pleasure. 
A third has collected the curious medals of antiquity ; he is quoted for the taste and 
purity of these precious objects ; nothing can be more complete than his collection : 

thus, no one can speak of antique medals without naming the Baron , doctor 

of medicine. 

Above all things recollect, that now, when you have most time at your disposal, 
you are least permitted to lose any of it. Now is the time when a Physician 
should possess ubiquity. In the morning he is at his hospital ; in the day with his 
countiy patients ; in the evening at a consultation of Plrysicians, where he must 
have been detained, — his consultations must be made to have retarded his visits ; 
he arrives late at his rooms, — an extensive practice requires so much attention ! He 
takes nothing from the poor for the present, content to visit the sick gratuitously, 
that he may afterwards have patients. Fame comes at first with loitering step, but 
let an epidemic arrive, and she travels post-haste. The cholera made some victims, 
it is true ; but then what Physicians has it not created ! Many made themselves 
Physicians extempore, moved by the pressing nature of the scourge. Humanity 
knew not at night that they possessed a diploma ; all Paris was acquainted on the 
morrow with the number of patients they could muster. In Paris, there were some 
Doctors more, and some men less. 

It has often been said that circumstances make the Physician. There are certain 
obscure diseases, certain sciaticas, that are cured quietly : collected together, they 
would have no more importance than a cold in the head. To tie an artery, were it 
the iliac, for a poor wretch in a bye lane, is to have done much for humanity, — for 
one's reputation very little ; but an angina treated successfully, in the person of a 
Countess, makes up for it, — there is compensation for all ! The Physician at first 
sees certain subjects in an hospital ; then he makes a few visits, no matter where. 
When he is aspirant only, he examines the disease ; when he has succeeded, it is 
the patient he examines. In the first epoch, he can find nothing but reputations 
unjustly acquired : the great Physicians are quacks ; true science is unknown; the 
delicacy of his conscience is a hindrance to him ; he blames himself for having so 
many scruples. Has he taken his position successfully : — " Do not trust yourself," 
he cries incessantly, " to those young people with their systems. Bleeding is to them 
as the mere spilling of water ; and they go cutting and slashing to right and left as 
well the limbs as the questions that fall in their way ! Experience has prevailed ! 
The great Physician is alone worthy of being called in ! " A consultation will some- 



76 THE PHYSICIAN. 

times bring together the two rivals, — the old and the new school : it is a delicate 
position. The young Physician has only a consulting voice ; the "Consulted," on 
the contrary, enjoys a double vote, and resolves the questions which the other only 
submits to him ; the accessory takes the upper hand of the principal ; the young 
Physician, called in first, costs less money, and sometimes cures, — great Doctors 
have been known to bury their patients at much expense. Not long since, a young 
Physician found himself face to face with a " Professor," at the house of a rich 
patient. Their methods were diametrically opposite. The junior Physician was 
that of the family, but the other had the authority of a great name in his favour. 
The " Consulted " blamed openly the system his Confrere was pursuing ; he was 
listened to, and the young Physician dismissed, being desired to send in his bill that 
very day. The patient was still enjoying an appearance of health. " Be very cer- 
tain of one thing," said the young Physician on giving his bill; " for as great a 
professor as Dr. is, his patient will die this very night." The young Phy- 
sician was recalled by the family. What had his patient done, then? — He had died ! 
The art, properly speaking, consists in never predicting but with absolute certainty — 
in occasioning fear, much more than awakening hope. Patients who go great 
lengths, always lead their Physicians great lengths also. To believe implicitly in 
the remedies adopted, is one method of increasing their effect. Quartan fevers have 
been cured by a few wafers ! — Nothing but medicine can save us ! 

Philosophers, and even Physicians themselves, declare that the study of medicine 
wears out the soul to the profit of the body. Even before arriving at eminence, the 
Physician is become profoundly sensual. The sight and study of suffering, in 
teaching him the means of avoiding it, have rendered enjoyment more precious to 
him : thus he excels in using, tempering, and developing whatever of pleasure it is 
given man to know. It is the Physician who roasts his own coffee, who selects his 
truffled partridges from Chevet's ; it is he who invented the pine-apple salad; nay, 
the greater part of our culinary refinements are derived from the medical body. 
When humanity is at the highest point of suffering, the Physician is luxuriating in 
social enjoyments. 

On the first step of the medical ladder is placed the Court Physician. The Court 
has several Physicians. To be well- dressed is a rule that stands high in the list of 
his " medical requisites ;" and from this he never departs, while his practice retains 
him in the Faubourg St. Honore, or in the rich hotels of the Chaussee d'Antin. 
All who pay nobly choose to be treated in like manner. Thanks to the Court Phy- 
sician, the anecdote of the saloons gains an audience in the palace ; he never relates 
more than the half of what he knqprs. His Parisian patients are always ill in some 
other quarter ; and he is consulted less on the malady his patient of the moment 
suffers, than on the diseases he hasvjto cure elsewhere. One word from him contains 
the bulletins of the ailment it is proper to allow one's self; his prescriptions are so 
many " orders of the day." Whoever is not a Court Physician has been the Phy- 
sician of the First Consul, or hopes sooner or later to be the Physician of a future 
Dictator. This distinction is frequently confounded with that of a Physician who 
is also a Professor. We know of no existence more varied or more complete than 
that of the Professor- Physician. To make the interests of science and his fortune 



THE PHYSICIAN. 77 

o-o well together ; to have a long list of patients and a large auditory ; to be obliged 
to reveal a thousand secrets for the benefit of the art, yet to let none escape, from 
regard to what he ow r es his patients ; to have his popularity as Professor, and his 
renown as a Physician ; to make them go hand in hand together ; to be profound 
with the Faculty, and superficial and amusing in the drawing-room ; — such is the 
part he must perform daily. The Professor- Physician has, besides his chair as Lec- 
turer, a fever ward in some hospital, and is invariably a Staff-surgeon also. Pain 
appears to him under all its phases : hideous and agonizing in an hospital, — dressed 
up, and almost becoming, in the boudoir of an elegant woman. From an hospital — 
that purgatory of all wretchedness, physical and moral — he passes into a sumptuous 
hotel, the very Eden of suffering. Life in Paris — that life, so full of violent con- 
trasts — he knows it intimately throughout. The most gloomy pictures of Ribeira 
are, in his eyes, pure reality ; and equally known to him are the religious and melan- 
choly touches of Murillo. A palace and a lazar-house to him form the world ! In 
his hospital, he is the physician alone — dry, hard, unfeeling— nay, perhaps, even 
brutal ; by the bed-side of a great lady, he is the physician of good company, — he 
is gentleness itself. In his rooms throughout the morning, he is an absolute monarch; 
in his visits of the evening, his royalty is a constitutional one at best. 

The fashionable world possesses also, in the Physician who prescribes mineral 
waters, a guarantee that they may safely confide in the sulphurous sites and 
pumping baths which rise from the bosom of the Pyrenees. The Physician of the 
baths departs with his patients in the earliest days of June. It is his business to 
procure waters for his patients, and patients for his waters. Half manager, half 
man of learning, he has more to do than had Moses in the heart of the desert. Pro- 
vided the Hebrews had a well, they troubled themselves but little as to whether the 
waters were more or less carbonated. For the Physician of the baths, the chemical 
analysis is his concern : he is also responsible for the healthfulness of the localities. 
Little pamphlets follow each other fast through his hands : the object is to prove that 
his fountain is super- excellent, although called by the unlearned a pool or pond; and 
that it is infinitely superior to all filters, known or imagined. Some people have 
the impertinence to pretend that this place is a sinecure. It is true that the Govern- 
ment, when sealing his patent, cares little about the acquirements needful to make 
use of it ; but to find a man who is at once a physician, geologist, chemist, and 
traveller, is not easy; so they select a man of a sound political creed, according to 
their reading, and the matter is accomplished.* 

When one has the misfortune to be nothing, either by one's titles or employ- 
ments, one may still establish one's self as Homoeopathist, Phrenologist, Somnam- 
bulist, or Magnetiser. Magnetism, especially, has set people raving of late years. 
A few " passes," and four pamphlets, shall suffice to set your public beautifully 
asleep ! What miracles have we not seen produced by these means ! — A Physician 
securing for himself an immense reputation, — in his own immediate circle. He had 
a daughter who read with her eyes open in an open book ! — Sublime of magnetism ! 
In what class shall we range him whose whole soul is absorbed in the study of 
Nature in her eccentricities — her phenomena ? His house is a museum not unlike 
* To cacli mineral establishment in France, a Physician is appointed by the Government. 



78 THE PHYSICIAN. 

to that of Dupuytren. There the Hottentot Venus is seen hand-in-hand with the 
Apollo Belvidere ; a skeleton, whose proportions are a model, is side by side with a 
twisted Quasimodo, pegged up in brass. In his repertory may be found a second 
edition of the Siamese twins. Human nature is both sublime and absurd beneath 
the scalpel of the anatomist : he unites the two extremes in his museum, himself 
occupying the middle region. 

Let us leave this impassioned lover of dead nature, to bury himself prematurely 
in his bone-house. Let us turn to the Physician of the poor. One is as yet but 
half dead, when one has recourse to the Dispensary Doctor : he gives his cares to 
those who can expect none, except on the ground of humanity. Philanthropy has 
its apostles — not to say martyrs — to climb houses of eleven floors ; to penetrate into 
blind dens of all sorts; to prescribe lemonade of citric acid to those whom four-pound 
loaves would infallibly restore ; — such is the ungracious task of the Philanthropist- 
Physician. The Administration should choose them young, if it would have them 
with any feeling. By dint of emotion, the heart becomes petrified ; the Physician 
is formed at the expense of the sensitive being; the sympathies of the soul evanish — 
they faint and die ; the body now seems only a certain substance, more or less 
organized, which is to be treated indifferently, according to certain methods. In 
matters of medicine, philanthropy is a mere tradition. Thence comes the Physician 
who is merely a Physician, — nothing more. Egotism is the basis of his character ; 
the semi-science he possesses has rendered him a materialist ; he believes only what 
he sees ; his exalted reason forbids him to pass certain limits, on pain of being called 
credulous, — a man of inferior intelligence. This love of the real resolves itself into 
an idolatry of gold. Follow a Physician from his entrance on the beaten path. At 
first pliant and insinuating, he takes insensibly the dry and cutting tone of one 
whose credit increases, and whose strong-box gets full. Soon master of his patients 
and his connexions, his tone will be that of a superior; it will be costly as the words 
of a lawyer : life and death escape from his lips according to his good pleasure ; but 
he estimates a crown -piece more highly than a man, — money is the end and aim of 
all his actions. At this period, he has not yet received the Cross of the Legion of 
Honour ; and this is a great affair for the Physician. If he is unable to procure this 
questionable mark of merit, he buys it, or- causes it to be bought, Should the Grand 
Chancellor of the Legion of Honour reject him from his el Dorado, he has recourse to 
some equivocal order, which approaches, by the colour of its insignia, to the ribbon 
so much coveted. Not that he cares for this as a distinction, but that he sees a 
supplement of patients at the end of a ribbon. 

There are some Physicians whose fortune is based primarily on the ignorance, the 
blindness, the shame which vice inspires even in those most deeply tainted by it ; 
misconduct opens a wound which they make wider ; you would believe that they 
would hide themselves ; that the darksome dens in which they await their victims 
escape the far-seeing eyes of the police. Quite the contrary : these persons even 
count on publicity ; they are in league with bill-stickers, distributors of advertise- 
ments in the public streets, who accost the passers-by on the cross-ways, and all 
that savage and degraded tribe of whom Robert Macaire is the patriarch. Publicity 
has nothing revolting for the bill- sticking Physician ; the grossest snares are those 



THE PHYSICIAN. 79 

that catch the most victims ; he speculates on a law- suit when publicity is of more 
importance than the fine, — it is so much gained ; the process is a catchword for him ; 
he would make his fortune could all the world know that he has been condemned 
to so many months' imprisonment, without prejudice to his individual qualities and 
merits ; he knows what his sentence will bring him in the year, and how much he 
gains per day by being in prison ; his enterprise is not bounded by the limits of a 
Parisian street ; let his industry prosper but never so little, and his nostrum extends 
itself over all the world. 

There is, in all professions, the fas et nefas which distinguishes the honest man 
from the scoundrel. An advertisement is to the Physician what a false weight is to 
the shopkeeper : the law touches both but imperfectly, — -public opinion must do the 
rest. 

Does any one desire to reconcile a narrow income with legitimate scruples and 
exaggerated difficulties. Every one has not the means of ruining himself to make his 
fortune: he seeks a situation; there are some exclusively open to Physicians. A man 
may be Physician to a theatre, without ceasing to be a Physician : there, it is his duty 
to decide how far a cough may be lawful ; he is the official judge of inflammations, 
more or less severe, and always instantaneous, that happen to privileged actresses 
the very day of a first representation ; it is utterly impossible to cheat him as to a 
hoarseness or a sprain ; the best performers here exert their seductions in vain ; the 
Physician of the theatre is a lynx for imaginary disorders. The Prima Donna detests 
the Physician who obliges her every now and then to be well, whether she will or 
will not : thus she has always in her good graces some young Doctor selected to plead 
the per contra of a headache. Apart from his functions, the Physician of the theatre 
is perfectly gallant ; it is rare, however, that his cares for the mere chorus- singers 
go beyond the black-currant paste. 

The Physician of a recruit company is charged to verify the perfect corporeal in- 
tegrity of the individuals submitted to his examination ; he must display more severity 
than the law itself, as Government is more captious as to the qualities of a substitute 
than those of the mere soldier. What is man, physically speaking ? — Ask that of the 
Physician in question : he must be complete, indeed, before he will accept him for 
you. St. Peter is not more difficult as to the choice of souls, than the Physician of 
the recruiting service as to the admission of the future marshals of France. 

The Physician of the living has his antipodes in his confrere, the Physician of 
the dead.* This last is called only to assure himself of the non-existence of his 
patient ; one feels an increased desire to live, that one may not need his visit, for he 
gives legal passports to the other world ; deaths and burials are made by his order ; 
you are not to die without his permission. Clothed in black from head to foot, the 
Physician of the dead is gay as a funeral plume ; he exists as a guarantee for the 
living and the dead ; the collaterals are infinitely obliged to him ; they owe him 
thanks ! 

When it is the purpose of Providence to afflict us, a disease is sent to some, while 
to others shall come a Physician. Have a Physician for your friend, if not a friend 

* There is, in each quarter of Paris, a Physician appointed by the Government, to inspect bodies 
after death. 



80 



THE PHYSICIAN. 



for your Physician ; he will have the courage to let you into the secrets of the art, 
and will not find you stricken mortally, when you are but indisposed. 

In our days, the Physician must be ambidexter ; he has lost his aristocratic pre- 
judices, which did not permit him to be confounded with a surgeon : or rather the 
surgeon has acquired that knowledge of the internal system which raises him to a 
level with his brother : he handles a stethoscope ; he practises percussion. In Eng- 
land, a Physician leaves his friend struck by apoplexy at his side, to die of the 
seizure, that he may not be dishonoured by bleeding him ! 

Since religious faith has become enfeebled in France, the Physician and the 
Lawyer have acquired a stronger influence over society. What false shame prevents 
us from revealing to the Priest, we are forced by pain to avow to the Physician, or 
by interest to unveil to the Lawyer. The Physician is the necessary confidant of 
all mysteries, and of the most sacred affections ; and the honour of families is pro- 
tected by his professional discretion. The Physician supersedes the Confessor. To 
sum up : — He assists at our birth ; during life we are never sure to be able to dis- 
pense with his aid : thus, next to the happiness of being constantly in good health, 
there is no greater in the world than that of having a good Physician. 




I 




THE ATTORNEY. 



BY ALTAROCHE. 




T T might seem, at first sight, that the French Attorney 
exercises one of those patent professions which can be 
known and understood by such of the public at large 
as will merely take the trouble to look and listen. This 
supposition is the more natural, as the profession is 
created and regulated by the law, which everybody is 
supposed to know. Such, however, is not the case, at 
least in Paris. There, the Attorney is not the slave of 
^ iR J^ " "" X ^ the legal text, but rather the proprietor, with all the 
proprietary rights of use and abuse. We might almost say, considering the ani- 
mosity with which he tortures it, that he is its executioner. The country Attorney 
has simply to follow set forms ; the Paris Attorney is compelled to invent and ima- 
gine : hence the mysteries of his offices, and of his private audience-room, which, 
nevertheless, are in some sort public places, though as much unknown to the world as 
are the green-room and side -slips of a theatre to the gaping countryman in the gallery. 
The Parisian Attorney's age ranges between twenty-eight and forty-five years : 
he is generally a head clerk, who, after having run through the various grades from 
junior clerk to the enjoyment of the functions of president of the office, finally pur- 
chases an attorneyship for himself. This position cannot be attained before the 
aspirant has completed his twenty- eighth year, — a noviciate of between ten and fif- 
teen years being necessary to pass from the rush-bottomed chairs of the office to the 
leathern arm-chair of the study : hence the Paris Attorney, who does not take up 
his arms — pens, we mean — till he is sixteen or seventeen years of age, is always at 
least eight-and-twenty when he takes the oaths. 

M 



82 THE ATTORNEY. 

An attorneyship in Paris is not a possession for life, but merely a transitory em- 
ployment. It is only in the country that a man dies an attorney. In Paris, an 
attorney's office is a kind of park preserve, well laid out, abounding with game, in 
which it is necessary to purchase a license to hunt for fortune. His game-bags 
being well filled, the sportsman resigns his snares and the key to the first comer. 
The license is generally held for about twelve years. In other words, after that 
term of practice, the Attorney begins to feel that there would be no impropriety in 
indulging himself with the charms of gilded — richly-gilded — retirement : thus the 
Parisian Attorney's age scarcely ever exceeds forty or forty-five years. 

There are still a few obstinate persons in the world who persist in regarding the 
Attorney of the present day as a faithful emanation of the ex-Procureur. This is a 
mistake : nothing can be farther removed from the Procureur of former times than 
the Attorney of to-day. Another and more numerous class, misled by M. Scribe's 
vaudevilles, imagine that the Paris Attorney is a fashionable dandy, who, from the 
box of his tilbury, eclipses his clients in the street ; is seen in the evening in the 
balcony of the Bouffes, or at the Opera ; stakes five hundred francs at ecarte, and 
galopades with graceful enthusiasm. This, also, is a mistake: the Parisian Attorney 
savours no more of the " Chicaneau" of the ancien regime than of the lions of the 
Jockey Club, or the young dandies of the Gymnase. 

There are two distinctly marked phases in the life of the Paris Attorney ; and his 
personal appearance is modified according to his ascendency in one or the other of 
these, — as bachelor or married man. 

We have seen that, after having for a longer or shorter period occupied the backed 
stool as head clerk, the neophyte most commonly buys an attorneyship on his own 
account.* At the conclusion of his bargain, he is generally without a penny; or, if he 
has saved anything out of his narrow earnings, or his family property, it is seldom 
more than enough to pay the first instalment of the price of his office. How must 
the remainder be raised ?— Simply, by a good marriage. 

The head clerk buys an attorneyship in order to marry ; the Attorney marries in 
order to raise the expenses of commencing a chace after fortune. 

Now it is that the Attorney is perfumed, pomaded, laced, and wears his hair 
curled ; now that he patronizes boots by Sakoski, and coats by Humann ; now 
pirouettes he gracefully into drawing-rooms, pays his court to charming mammas, 
caresses lap-dogs, thrums on the guitar, and makes himself indispensable to young 
ladies by his earnest invitations to quadrille, or to read the last new poem, — a task, 
the bitterness of which his glass of eau sucree hardly suffices to conceal. In a word, 
he neglects not one of the thousand and one recipes in use among expectant wife- 
hunters. 

But this episode in the Attorney's life lasts at most only a few months : he soon 
suits himself ; for, with only five hundred francs in his cash-box, he is always an 
eligible match. 

His marriage concluded, and the price of his office paid, the Attorney casts his 
slough, and becomes another man. He now wears a plain cravat with a slovenly tie; 
orders his boots at the bootmaker's at the corner of his street; and one of his clients, 

* The number of Attorneys is limited in Paris, and every nomination must have the sanction of 
the Government. 



i 



THE ATTORNEY. 83 

a tailor, supplies him with coats and unmentionables thirty per cent, under the prices 
of fashionable tailors. In a word, to the elegant succeeds the solid. With the 
Attorney, all is black, — coat, boots, and pantaloons ; his cravat only is of white 
cambric. 

Adieu to the Bois de Boulogne, and the Cafe Anglais ! The married Attorney 
no longer walks for pleasure, but on business only ; he no longer breakfasts, dines, 
or sups : he takes his meals at home. 

Of all his former luxuries, he retains only his morning-gown and slippers ; and 
these only because they are indispensable accessories to the ensemble of a Parisian 
attorney's office. The morning-gown and slippers are, in some sort, the uniform of 
the Attorney while enthroned in his sanctum in the exercise of his calling. The 
Attorney monopolizes these two articles of dress : one never sees a clerk, not even 
a head clerk, in a morning-gown, even of simple calico, or with his feet encased in 
slippers. These are, by special prerogative, the Attorney's ; and we live in a time 
when the pettiest dignitary is jealously tenacious of his prerogative, even to ridicule, 
which is the common prerogative of all. 

But if the Paris Attorney is rather negligent than neat in his attire, his private 
room, to make amends, is furnished and fitted up with great expense and elegance. 
This is not to make work less disagreeable, or more attractive : it is simply another 
calculation on the part of our Attorney. A luxuriously-furnished study is of the 
same use to the Parisian Attorney, with regard to his clients, as were his fashion- 
able dress and habits when on the look-out for a wife. 

This magnificence of the audience-room is still more striking by contrast with 
the humility, — we might even say, without exaggeration, the meanness of the office. 
This, however, is not without its wherefore. The Attorney adopts the principle 
employed in panoramas, where the spectator is led through dark passages, in order 
that his eye may at last repose with greater pleasure on the artfully-combined light 
thrown on the picture. His chambers are therefore always so arranged that the 
client must pass through the office to reach the principal's study. This is a con- 
trivance which has been hereditary in the race of Paris Attorneys from time im- 
memorial. 

The Parisian Attorney is habitually an early riser : he is out of bed by eight 
o'clock, and installed in his closet by ten at the latest. In the summer, he sleeps 
out of town; for the Attorney almost always owns, or hires, a country house, where 
he sojourns from Saturday night till Tuesday morning, — the Paris Attorney, like 
some classes of mechanics, generally keeping Monday as a holiday. 

In winter, he passes from his bedroom to his study. The doors are opened by 
ten o'clock, when the clients, who have been waiting in the office from nine, are 
ushered into the sanctuary. In the course of the interview that ensues, the Attorney 
of course talks to his client of his cause, which was the object for which the latter 
sought his presence ; but, so to speak, this is only a pretext. After a few technical 
expressions relative to the cause — with which, however, he is unacquainted, and of 
which he has only learnt a summary by heart — the Attorney commences a conversa- 
tion on indifferent topics. He possesses a marvellous talent for captivating his in- 
terlocutor's attention ; he amuses, interests, and finally turns him to his purpose. 
In short, when the Attorney has managed to place himself on good terms with a 



84 THE ATTORNEY. 

wealthy litigant, he makes of him a constant visitor at his home, or rather at his 
office. In every attorney's office in Paris, there exists a circle of loungers, who go 
to their attorney as one would go to the Public Library or the Zoological Gardens. 
The call forms part of their daily routine of business. They would miss the half- 
hour's gossip with the Attorney as much as an omitted call at the accustomed cafe. 
The day would be incomplete ; a point of memory would be lost : " Use is second 
nature." It is well understood that these honest persons would be loth to disturb, 
without remunerating, their Attorney, — without offering him some better compen- 
sation than the charm of their society. 

The case which brought them into contact with the man of the law is at last 
terminated, but the intercourse it has created seldom fails to survive. Then the 
client makes it a case of conscience to bring about another lawsuit, which in some 
sort justifies his calls. At first, he sought an Attorney to manage his suit ; now he 
looks out for a lawsuit to maintain his intimacy with his Attorney. This attach- 
ment of the client is one of the Attorney's greatest triumphs. 

But the Attorney does not always confine himself to assuring the management 
for life, and sometimes even after death, of all his client's lawsuits. He contrives, 
besides, to obtain his confidence : initiated, of necessity, into a knowledge of part of 
his affairs, it is not long before he learns all. Then he gives his officious advice ; 
and, in addition to his public functions, offers his private services in all difficult or 
delicate matters. Has the client money to invest ?* — The Attorney will undertake 
to find an advantageous investment. Or does he, on the contrary, want to borrow ? 
— The Attorney will procure the necessary sum. In brief, step by step, the Attorney 
worms himself completely into his client's confidence, and becomes manager of his 
temporal interests. We need not add that he levies a handsome per-centage by way 
of premium, as a matter of course. The labourer is worthy of his hire ; and the 
Parisian Attorney generally gives himself a world of labour. 

In this manner, the Attorney's sanctum provides at once for the Attorney, and for 
his office. These marvellous results are due to the insinuating eloquence of the 
legal practitioner ; and hence the gift of eloquence is one of the Parisian Attorney's 
essential qualifications, and the talent for small talk is no less necessary to him than 
to the fashionable hair-dresser. 

An hour or two for the reception of clients, a quarter of an hour for signatures, 
and half an hour devoted to instructing the head clerk, constitute our Attorney's 
official day. Perhaps it would be as well to include three quarters of an hour for 
the perusal of the papers. The Paris Attorney, on account of the low price, sub- 
scribes to the Siecle, or to the Presse, according to his shade of politics ; to the 
Droit, or the Gazette des Tribunaux, on account of his profession ; and to the Petites 
Affiches, for the sake of the legal advertisements. He receives the Affiches Parisi- 
ennes, in his quality of shareholder. 

Grave and an ti- epicurean as he seems, the Parisian Attorney is not, however, a 
systematic enemy to the enjoyments of this life : he occasionally gives a rout in his 
apartments, and gets up a waltz and quadrille party in his drawing-room. But the 
lawyer's nail never fails to fret a hole in the Amphitryon's glove: with the Attorney, 
pleasure is only a part of, and not a departure from, his system ; and the ball is only 

* Conveyancing business belongs legally, in France, to the Notary, and not to the Attorney. 



THE ATTORNEY. 85 

another of his baits. It is a periodical assumption of politeness, put on to preserve 
the remembrance of barristers whose assistance may be useful, and magistrates 
whose acquaintance is desirable. The Attorney even asks to his parties his principal 
clients, who fail not to accept the invitation, and hasten to moisten their lips with 
the water for which they themselves provided the sugar, and to dance to the music 
of violins of which they have furnished the strings. 

Will it be believed that these balls are dreaded by the clerks in the office, who 
behold their arrival with more terror than a night on which they have to do duty as 
National Guards ? The scene of their labours is only changed, for a few hours, into 
the drawing-room. The Attorney has to recruit as many dancers as possible ; and 
to the strangers rightfully belong the fair and youthful partners. In virtue of his 
right as their principal, the Attorney commits to his clerks the duty of cavaliering 
the ancient dowagers, advocates' dames on the decline, and clients' ladies in the 
autumn of their existence, — in a word, all the superannuated lady aspirants who 
covet the excitement of the quadrille. The wretched clerks drag the clog thus im- 
posed on them the whole night. Slaves of the ball, they are never liberated before 
five in the morning. 

From what has been said of the distribution of his day, it will be seen that the 
Attorney exercises the calling of business agent, rather than that of a real attorney. 
The office is only an accessory, if not in his budget, at least in the division of 
his personal work. The business of his office is conducted under, or rather apart 
from, the Attorney's management, as follows : — 

The management is vested in the head clerk, who is more of a lawyer than the 
principal himself. The second clerk superintends the common-law department, 
under the immediate instructions of his superior. The third clerk attends at the 
courts. It is his duty to get the files examined and signed, to engross the causes, 
to answer appeals of audience, and to procure delays. He is also the necessary 
! messenger between the office and the barrister — in a word, he is the Attorney's am- 
bassador at the courts. 

After these officials, come one or several law-students, who have been placed by 
' their friends in an Attorney's office, as much to employ their short leisure, as to 
perfect them in the law and its practice. These amateur clerks receive no salary, 
and their services correspond to their remuneration. Their employment in the 
office consists in writing vaudevilles destined to be refused by the Folies Drama- 
tiques, or love-letters to the milliner's girls round the corner. 

Come we to the junior clerk, called in profane parlance the " saute-ruisseau," 
and, professionally, the " petit- clerc." He it is who runs on errands for the office. 
Generally, he is a youth from fifteen to eighteen years of age ; though sometimes, 
notwithstanding his appellation of " petit-clerc," he is a good big boy. We knew 
one " petit-clerc," who must have been at least thirty years of age. 

An Attorney's office produces from twenty-five to eighty thousand francs per 

annum, the average annual net produce being about fifty thousand francs. It is, 

however, admitted, that if the practice from which the Attorney nets fifty thousand 

francs were managed as are most country practices, it would not produce more than 

j twenty thousand francs at most, even after the Paris tariff.* 

* In Paris the costs are taxed higher than in the country. 



86 THE ATTORNEY. 

Whence this enormous difference ? 

The country Attorney — we mean the straight-forward and upright one — only 
reckons as his costs out of pocket the sums actually expended by him from his own 
purse. With regard to his fees, that is to say, the price of the work done in his 
office, they are strictly regulated by the trouble which the business requires. With 
the Paris Attorney, it is widely different. 

On one hand, there is no expenditure but that which is real and necessary ; and 
on the other, there figure among the emoluments articles of which the bare designa- 
tion would strike with astonishment the provincial Attorney (we still mean the 
straight-forward and honest one). 

In his summary, the Parisian Attorney complicates the proceedings as much as 
possible, while the country Attorney generally tries to simplify them. To attain 
his end, the provincial Attorney takes the shortest way, while the Paris Attorney 
makes a long detour, well knowing that to him the road is not sown with thorns 
and flints. He introduces the utmost possible number of pleadings into the same 
cause ; he crowds proceeding upon proceeding, suit upon suit. He not only goes 
through all the formalities necessary to the affair in hand, but complicates it in 
every way that the law directly or indirectly authorizes. In a word, his talent 
consists in extracting from a suit all that is legally possible, and in making every 
squeeze advantageous to himself. 

It would be an easy task to enumerate a host of instances that call into opera- 
tion the most profound ingenuity and the most incontestable address. The request, 
as part and parcel of all lawsuits, and the licitation (sale of indivisible property), 
as a subject of special proceedings, occupying the most prominent place in the 
Attorney's case at issue, at once suggest themselves to our mind. 

The request (requcte) is an anticipatory pleading, in which are set forth the means 
of defence. The attorney for the defence supplies a copy of it to each of his ad- 
versaries. This is one of the most pregnant acts of the procedure ; for the Attorney 
takes care to be well paid for drawing up the original, and the law taxes rather 
highly the right of copying. 

Be tt knoiirn ttnto all fHen that there are divers ways to swell the profit of the 
request. We do not allude to the method that consists in inserting only eighteen 
lines on a page in the copies, and seven syllables in each line, although the rules for 
legal folios exact twenty-five lines a page and fifteen syllables a line : this is a pro- 
fessional peccadillo of ancient standing, from which the country Attorney is no more 
exempt than his more learned Parisian brother ; nor is it, considering all things, 
worth mentioning. But it not unfrequently happens, that the Attorney and his 
clerks have neglected to prepare the request in proper time, and the eve of the 
day appointed for hearing the cause suddenly arrives, without this most essential 
part of the business having been performed. An opportunity for a request must 
not, however, be thus sacrificed. The contingency is met in the following manner. 

There not being time to transcribe an entire process, the Attorney is fain to serve 
his opponent with some sheets of stamped paper, the first and last pages containing 
the beginning and end of a request ; and the remainder being old law MSS. 

Sometimes, when the second clerk has stitched his sheets, the number of which 
he regulates according to the importance of the case, the head clerk, or the principal, 



THE ATTORNEY. 87 

taking the roll in his hand, observes, " Fifty folios, only ! This case will stand at 
least seventy-five." And thereupon the additional folios of old papers are inserted 
in the middle of the roll ; nor does this proceeding prevent the process from being 
charged in the bill of costs, as if it were completely genuine and true. 

The Attorney for the opposing party, on whom the request has been served, 
detaches the first and last leaves, and returns the intermediate ones to his colleague, 
to serve for the same purpose a second, third, and fourth time, until the folios or 
the thread be worn out. We know an office where the same MSS. have been in use 
upwards of five years, and have yielded a net profit of nearly six thousand francs. 

The licitation is the legal sale of an estate that cannot be divided. For instance, 
a house in Paris descends in heritage to two brothers. It being impossible to 
divide it into two portions, the brothers apply conjointly to an attorney to have it 
legally sold. In such a case, the Attorney's business would appear to be of the 
simplest nature. The two parties being agreed, it would only be necessary to pro- 
cure the assent of the Court to a judgment drawn up by himself, authorizing the 
licitation, or legal sale, after going through the usual forms. 

But widely different is the Parisian Attorney's interpretation of his duty. So 
simple a proceeding would not produce a sufficiently long bill of costs. Our 
Attorney's way of going to work is as follows : — Having received the written 
request of the two brothers, who have but one will, one common wish, namely, to 
sell as soon as possible, and share the proceeds — the Attorney draws up the demand 
for licitation at Peter's request ; Paul offers no opposition — far from it. But no 
matter ; our Attorney fictitiously selects for Paul another attorney, and, under the 
name of this colleague, who kindly lends his signature (such being the custom), 
serves himself, as Peter's attorney, with a request to hinder the licitation in the 
name of Paul. 

The reasoning urged in this process cannot be otherwise than illusory, for a 
licitation is never opposed by the law ; therefore, it is only an affair of form, to 
which no great importance is attached. The second clerk has in store an abundance 
of consecrated phrases for this fictitious opposition. 

In the request that he draws up in the name of the opposing Paul, he says, 
" You must be aware, and unfortunately, it is an observation but too well-founded, 
that at the present moment all business is stagnant, in consequence of the existing 
commercial crisis. Paris, in particular, has especial reason to complain of the sad 
effects it produces, Time was, when the capitalist sought with avidity for eligible 
investments in houses ; but now that the rage for joint- stock companies has made 
such rapid advances, complete discredit has fallen on all that does not offer tempting 
advantages to speculators and stock-jobbers ; buyers are therefore at a discount, 
and houses, no more than land, cannot be disposed of even at the most deteriorated 
price," &c, &c. 

Now comes Peter's turn. Peter replies to Paul's plea by a rejoinder : and the 
same clerk, after having manufactured the demand, is charged with the reply. He 
makes Peter speak in such terms as the following : — 

" Our opponent is in error, and completely mistaken in his view of the actual 
state of business. Joint- stock companies have fallen into complete discredit ; 
capital is flowing back into solid and substantial investments, exempt from the risk 



88 THE ATTORNEY. 

and hazard of speculative commerce, and confidence is universal. It would be a 
difficult task to find a more propitious moment to effect an advantageous sale of 
houses, landed property/' &c, &c. 

We need not say that this theme may be varied at will to the same tune, and 
that, under the pen of the second clerk, similar phrases may be spun out to an 
indefinite length, so as to produce two voluminous requests. Formulae, consisting 
of a certain number of pages each, according to the importance of the licitation, are 
in use. If the property be of small value, the style of the request is rapid and 
concise as that of Paul Louis Courrier ; on the contrary, if the price is considerable, 
the style of the request is diffuse and inflated as that of Victor Ducange, or 
Salvandy. 

A supposititious exchange of summonses then ensues between Paul and Peter, 
who, after a certain time, find, to their amazement, that they have unconsciously 
sustained a formal lawsuit. Singular litigants ! who, without the slightest differ- 
ence of opinion, have contested in the judicial arena till their worthy attorney has 
exhausted his fictitious combinations. 

At last, when it only remains to procure the Court's assen* to the judgment, the 
Attorney, who takes especial care not to submit the ridiculous contest to the ap- 
preciation of the Court, draws up the form and has it legalised ; and the house being 
next sold in due course, the Attorney touches the price of the law proceedings. 

Such are the ingenious ways by which the Paris Attorney rises to wealth by 
certain and rapid steps. And let the reader bear in mind that we have only noticed 
two or three cases, taken, almost at random, from a thousand. 

After twelve years' practice, which period is generally sufficient to enable him to 
save three or four hundred thousand francs, the Attorney sells his attorneyship to a 
head clerk, who pays almost as much for the right of recommencing, on his own 
account, in the same fertile field. 

Thus our Attorney retires with an annual income of between thirty and forty 
thousand francs. He continues to reside in Paris in the winter, and in the country 
in the summer. He is now a man of leisure ; he eats, drinks, digests, sleeps, and 
subscribes to the Journal des Debats. 

He is an elector, a member of a philanthropical society, and more frequently 
justice of the peace ; he especially courts the last-named functions, which he con- 
siders a stepping-stone to the bench. He is invariably decorated with the Legion of 
Honour, and in every election he is the last candidate on the poll. 

This inert and passive life, or rather vegetation, of the retired Attorney, is only 
disturbed by two accidental crises. Every two months (when he is not reporting 
captain in the national guard, to which title his former judicial life stands him as 
qualification), his adjutant summons him, as commanding officer, to the guard-room, 
where he declaims eloquently against griping speculators and rioters longing for 
plunder : once every two years, he is summoned as juryman to the court of assize ; 
where, after having incontestably manifested his legal qualifications by addressing a 
thousand questions to the witness in the box, and in his harangue to his brother 
jurymen in the jury-room, he finds a verdict against an unhappy wretch who, im- 
pelled by hunger and poverty, has broken a pane of glass in a baker's window, and 
stolen a loaf. 







THE FIGURANTE. 



BY PHILIBERT AUDE BRAND. 




THERE never was a time when the blaze of the foot- 
lights did not dazzle a multitude of bright French eyes, 
and turn a multitude of gay French heads. Even if 
Watteau, the painter of love in idleness, had not left 
us a few shadowy sketches of the opera nymphs of 
" auld lang syne" — the gay and graceful rogues who 
exchanged the solitude of the counter for the enchant- 
ments of the stage, yet hardly any one is ignorant that, 
as long ago as 1770, few girls of the working classes could resist the haunting 
desire, the exciting fever, which drove them into public, to mix in the glories of the 
chorus, or the glitter of the ballet. From that day to this the desire and the fever 
have only grown by what they fed on. No one can wonder at it in Paris especially, 
where the theatre exercises so large an influence on society — the theatre — the 
modern theatre, has so many charms, so many resources, so many mighty spells, 
that it may well fire young hearts with fond ambitions. 

'Tis the rosy dream that is for ever hovering over a number of our young Parisian 
girls. Of those I mean who are born in the porter's lodge, as well as of the merry 
chatterers, the pretty recluses of the milliner's work-room, who hang all day, like 
so many Penelopes, over their eternal task of gauze and ribbons. After the labours 



90 THE FIGURANTE. 

of the week, when they return to their garrets, excited by the terrors of a noisy 
tragedy or a gloomy melodrama, it is that dream which peoples their slumbers, it is 
that which sits upon their eye-lids, and casts its spell over them. The rich attire, 
the queen's mantle starred with spangles, the floating tunic of some Greek maid, 
the silver-laced stomacher, the pearl band in the hair, the ear-rings, the diamond 
necklace, the topaz-ring, the pure white complexion — (not an actress but may put 
on that) — the silken sandal, — it is all like fairy-land — -and I know not if at such 
times Shakspeare's Queen Mab does not smile upon the sleepers. 

Poor children ! they fancy they are applauded — covered with garlands — caressed 
— the favourites of Paris : they enjoy the longing looks cast after them ; they enjoy 
the beauty for which they are praised. Oh ! that the delusion of such dreams would 
but stop there ! — The next day, at their work, as they prattle with the needle and 
the scissors in their hand, there is not one who cannot repeat some snatch of last 
night's comedy : there is not one but will take a part in it ■ one will try her voice ; 
another has caught up an attitude — the boldest of them can recite the whole of that 
speech which the house applauded so vehemently. Their pastime is a parody, but 
there is emulation at the bottom of it. Some are for the old school, others for 
modern declamation. The desire of theatrical success grows on them insensibly — 
it is fostered by a thousand enchanting fables, whispered from ear to ear, of the im- 
comparable success of the theatrical divinity of the day. Not a girl in Paris has 

ever forgotten that before Mademoiselle came out at the opera — (and she 

owed her success to nothing but her beautiful eyes) — she was a milliner ; as for 

Mademoiselle she was nothing but a sempstress ; Mademoiselle 

was, they say, a stage below her, but Mademoiselle was certainly lower 

still. 

The path of these delusions is as slippery as glass when once the foot is upon it. 
These poor foolish chits may aspire, they think, to anything. After these necessary 
preliminaries, a few more days suffice to disgust them with the toil of the work- 
shop. The furbelows are cast aside : the fashions of the month are forgotten : the 
work-basket is shut up with disdain ; and every Sunday, the bird gets out of her 
cage to enlist from ten in the morning till three, amongst the dramatic recruits of 
M. Saint Aulaire. There is now no going back — the stage is before her, the part suits 
her, the piece was made for her, the public of that theatre is more ready to applaud 
than to blame. Nothing tells her that she is not first-rate in the confidants of 
Voltaire's tragedies, and in the brazen-tongued handmaidens of Moliere. The way 
lies clear before her — the least trial she can make of her strength is to solicit from 
a manager the favour of a speedy first appearance : need I add that, without a 
moment's hesitation, the manager has great pleasure in engaging her — as a 
figurante. 

A Figurante ! she never dreamed of such a thing ! a Figurante — a mere chorus- 
woman, condemned to unobserved pirouettes and unheard monosyllables — a bitter 
cup, if it must be drunk out. Nay ! indeed ! she must begin somewhere. The 
figurante of to-night may be prima-donna to-morrow ; the thing has happened a 
hundred times. 

Poor girl ! will she never cease to hope then ? Don't imagine she will make 



THE FIGURANTE. 91 

an effort to advance one step further, humble as her condition is: the part of super- 
numerary satisfies her desires for a long time. 

To comply with the tradition of her caste, the first thing she does is to choose a 
name as sweet as honey, and as white as milk. The baptism of the theatre shows 
how important it is to have a good name — indeed, matters have come to such a pass 
that all the names in the calendar are exhausted. Before she makes a final decision, 
the Figurante passes in review the names of all the heroines of all the novels she 
has ever read. She examines, she inquires, she rakes up old recollections, she 
consults the last new oracle. When all is over, she determines upon Pamela, 
Maria, Celina, Flora, Indiana, Emma, Lelia, Lucy, Herminia, Heloise, — perhaps she 
determines upon the whole batch at once. A little later, on some great occasion, 
when the green-room is on fire with chit-chat, or the side scenes with the last suc- 
cessful debut, her companions will give her a nick-name — Bel-QEil, or Bouche- 
Rose, or Fine- Oreille — a title to which she must needs learn to answer. 

When she first comes out, the Figurante is about seventeen — sometimes more, 
seldom less. Her first appearance is hailed by a battery of double opera- glasses, 
raised to decide whether she is light or dark, whether she has good eyes and long eye- 
lashes, or whether she has not some other grace to throw away upon the sultans of 
the stalls — a roguish mouth, a rounded arm, a taper hand, a small foot — and I know 
not what treasures besides. She is pretty ; so much the better, but that is not 
enough. All her charms would be of no great use if she is not to be allowed to put 
them forward. To be good-looking is an excellent reason for succeeding : but to 
be alive, that is to say, to be gay, alert, taking, with a speaking eye, a good figure, 
and a pretty leg, is more than a reason for succeeding, — it is certain success. 
Success for the Figurante, means the privilege of leading the troop — whether it be a 
bevy of peasant girls round the may-pole, or a frolic of city-maidens on a holiday. 
To obtain this foremost place, there is no artifice she would not use. All the tricks 
of women's wit — a brighter shawl, a more smiling mouth, a smaller shoe, an arm 
more neatly flung a-kimbo, like the handle of an Etruscan vase ; an empassioned 
glance at the stage manager, a little slander about her rival's looks, — a kiss, perhaps, 
— certainly a good turn — she will do anything or everything if you will but let her go 
first : nay, she would submit to the judgment of Paris over again ; nothing in the 
whole world could afflict her so much as to fall backwards in successive slips from 
place to place, till she finds herself the last joint of the tail : at that distance, you 
know, however pretty the head may be, it is only the head of the tail, out of sight 
of the public. 

A circumstance which is hardly less worthy of observation, is the humility of the 
Figurante towards the stars of the theatre — I should call it servility, if it were not 
even more than that — it is fear. A queen, a great coquette, or a tyrant — the crimson 
train, the wooden sceptre, or the tinsel crown, possess a sovereign power over her. 
They may use her for any sudden shifts ; they may fling on her the burden of an 
ill-natured caprice, or their resentment for the severity of the public. The Figurante 
is their toy. They play with her as a school-girl plays with her doll, if they please : 
there is not a more docile creature in the world. Instead of complaining, she looks 
upon every teasing they give her as a distinguished honor. In the good old times 



92 THE FIGURANTE. 

of the theatre, just as they were going on the stage, one of the figurantes came to 
the side- scene radiant with smiles — H What has made you so merry?" said they. 
— " Ah !" she replied, " 'tis very natural, M. Saint Prix has trod on my toe." 

The theatrical life of the Figurante at one of the minor theatres is a monotonous 
routine of village simplicities or city impertinences — for ever jingling the worn-out 
melody of some superannuated vaudeville, for ever rubbing their hands as they come 
upon the stage on the everlasting blue or yellow petticoats edged with black velvet. 
Happy is she whose fate has raised her to share in the splendours of the lyric stage, 
and to take part in the magnificent pageants of the modern opera ! Every art 
lends its treasure, every Muse bestows her gift, every spell of dramatic genius is 
wrought upon the audience on those magical evenings when the cheerful melodies 
of Auber, or the austere grandeur of Meyerbeer, bring upon the stage the passionate 
ecstacy of Naples, or the terrors of supernatural romance. The Figurante is in the 
midst of it all ! she stands by the side of Masaniello, in her bright Calabrian tire, 
when the morning of liberty is breaking over the blue waves : — she rushes across 
the scene in that horrible night of St. Bartholomew, when the harsh clamour of the 
military band is mingling with the crash of artillery and the jar of the tocsin — when 
£|ie music of passion is interrupted by the screams of the women and the sublime 
chant of the martyr. I would fain believe that on such occasions the poor Figu- 
rante feels something of her early visions of dramatic art fluttering within her, and 
that she becomes for a moment a part of those great works of genius — at any rate 
she has an entirely new dress for the occasion — perhaps she may appear in a new 
attitude — perhaps that pale young poet who always sits in the second row of the 
stalls may notice her. Ah ! she has hopes that make ample amends for all the 
trouble of the rehearsals. 

Though the Figurante is born in the lower strata of society, it does sometimes 
happen, I dare scarcely tell you how, that she finds herself suddenly in possession of 
all that comfort and luxury can lavish upon her. Nothing of all that embellishes 
the sweet and downy existence of a pretty woman in Paris is then wanting. She 
has her cachemere shawls, her boas, her casket, her glittering ornaments, her fur- 
niture, her britska, her livery, her page, — all that can seduce, all that can enchant 
her, — she has it all, held on the shortest and most precarious tenure. The days of 
splendour generally pass as swift as lightning : she has hardly time to forget, for an 
instant, the humbler garb she used to wear — the red plaid shawl, which she will 
keep till her dying hour, her black sandals, her gingham frock, her faded satin hat, 
and her pinchbeck chain. It costs her but little to go back to her poverty — to bid 
farewell to her prodigal protector. The bird returns to its nest — to free and un- 
bought pleasures — to love's own real dominion ! Out upon the servitude of stately 
dresses ! out upon the ornaments which are bought with lies ! give her back the 
little bed, though it be hard, where she slept so well — give her back the old 
chamber, though it be nearer the stars ! she has indeed to shift from the first floor 
to the fifth over the first landing, about two hundred feet above the level of the Seine. 
'Tis rather high : never mind, her foot is light upon the stair, and, thank heaven, 
she is independent once more ; she needs no pity on her free penury. When once 
she has got back to that little cell, so humble but so neat, she has not far to look 



THE FIGURANTE. 93 

for happiness. Her singing-bird's cage hangs in the corner — a little further you 
will find a colony of silk- worms, and in the window- seat a world of sweet flowers ; 
here a bunch of roses waving in the sunshine, there a pot of mignionette flinging its 
fragrance on the air ; the red stock, too, with its humble but subtle odour, and the 
clematis, trailing in festoons about the window, and peeping into the room like a 
poet's May song. Look a little further ! — you will find on that peg a Spanish 
guitar, to which our poor recluse will hum some melancholy ditty from last year's 
opera. Yet, as there is nothing in the world so dull as a solitary life, at a certain 
hour she has somebody to talk to. The angel in a human shape who visits her is, 
probably, the shopman from the mercer's across the street, but he invariably passes 
for her cousin, just as it always happens on the stage. But the Figurante is not 
without other society : besides the dress-maker and the flower-maker of the theatre, 
she has a round of acquaintance amongst the rising Taglionis and the future Dorvals* 
who meet to rant and squall together once a fortnight. Then she is on excellent 
terms with the porter's wife, whom she supplies with unlimited free entrances to the 
theatre. Visiting cards she does not deal in, but she scrawls on her door with a bit 
of chalk, — 

" Mademoiselle , Dramatic Artist, lives here." 

Perhaps you have no notion of the very humble remuneration which the talents 
of the Figurante obtain for her : it is sometimes fifteen sous, sometimes two francs 
— never more. The Figurante finds that it is not enough to procure necessaries : 
accordingly, she does not waste an instant of the day — she is as busy as a bee, — 
notwithstanding the spirit of idleness which lurks in her character, she lends 
herself to all the labours of the work- woman : she can hem cravats ; she can wash 
them ; she can embroider braces ; she can put a tassel on a Greek cap for the ha- 
berdashers. 

It is generally with the savings of these earnings that she starts for her Sunday 
dinner, and takes the arm of her cousin aforesaid, till they get to the private tables 
of the Hermitage. The feast of Belshazzar was nothing compared to the luxury of 
that t6te-a-t£te dinner. They call for an omelette au rhum — they laugh and chatter 
till they have emptied the bottle of Sauterne — their jokes get more and more prac- 
tical — who knows where they may spend the evening ? — at the Montagnes Russes ? 
— I would lay a wager on it. 

But no sooner has the Figurante set foot in the sanctuary called the side-scenes, 
than she is as prudish as an old maid, every time a rash hand approaches her wasp- 
like waist. Not quite so, indeed, with every one — she is far enough from being so 
rude to those who hold the keys of dramatic success, — the author. Round him she 
is for ever winding and turning, — nothing is too good for him ; she will fling her 
arms over his neck, and say, with a look of such archness that I wonder he can 
resist it, — " My dearest author, do write me a scrap of a part !" Then, if the 
author hesitates but a little, she eyes him, she cajoles him, she begs like a kitten, 
she plays upon him a thousand arch sallies: — " Do but this once — I shall die if you 
don't write me one little part : every day you live, you waste a lapful of charming 
things on a set of gawkies, who are not worth my little finger. I'll do whatever you 



94 J THE FIGURANTE. 

like — speak the word — I obey. Do you want a Bacchanal ? here am I. A vam- 
pire ? I'll do it. A fine lady ? — I can play with my fan like a queen. — Empresses 
and sewing-girls — anything you please — only one little scrap of a part." 

But the dragon of the Hesperides was more easily seduced than a successful dra- 
matic author. He is callous to all sorts of emotions, and he taps the suppliant on 
the cheek with a " Well, my goddess, perhaps I may, I don't know, we shall see !" 
— and the poor Figurante will catch at these few careless words as if some one had 
thrown a jewel at her feet. She hoards them like a treasure, she cherishes them as 
her best hopes. She knows the advantage of not being lost in the crowd — she sighs 
for a prominent place, and a becoming dress ; she sighs for the golden pleasures of 
her earlier youth. Alas ! she sighs in vain. The authors and the public take 
no more thought about her. 

And here we ought in fairness to clear the Figurante from an unjust aspersion — 
an aspersion which actually accuses her of ingratitude. An ungrateful Figurante ! 
a Figurante not good-natured and good-hearted ! What an age we live in — what 
calumnies we live upon ! To say that, as soon as a gleam of happiness shines upon 
her — she forgets, she abjures, she neglects her father and mother — 'tis sheer slander 
and nothing else ! It has been demonstrated over and over again, that she is as full 
of filial piety as Antigone. She errs, if she err, on the other side. Her father goes 
on errands for her, and she pays him : her mother brushes her slippers, she pays 
her : carries her notes, she pays her : acts as her duenna, takes her to the theatre, 
receives some gentlemen and shows out others, — and the more she does, the more 
she is paid. Nobody can doubt that such things are not done for nothing. 

Who can say that the Figurante is ungrateful ? Whoever had been with me one 
night at the opera last winter would have been convinced of the contrary. I think 
they were going to act the Diable Boiteux : I was rambling about the lobby, and 
thence to the side-scenes, when, about half-an-hour before the curtain rose for the 
first act, a lively altercation sprung up between one of the old women who open the 
boxes, and a little supernumerary brunette, an arch little beauty, called, if I re- 
member right, " Crane's-foot," from the delicacy of her leg. According to the im- 
memorial custom of the place and the profession, these ladies were telling each other 
some home truths. 

" Crane's-foot," squalled the old woman, " Crane's-foot, I tell you you'll come to a 
bad end — and 'tis I who tell you so : the least that will happen to you is that you'll 
die on the scaffold — I'd swear it : you ought to be ashamed of having a cab at 
the door, and leaving your own flesh and blood splashing about in the mud. 
You've your fill of every thing, and they are as ill off as they can be. What does 
that respectable father of yours do, pray ? He sells checks in the street — and the 
mother who suckled you, goes out as a charwoman." 

" Hold your tongue there," screamed Crane's-foot, " that is a word or two too 
much. What business have you to say that I don't do my father and mother a good 
turn when I can : my father has not a word to say ; the little old fellow is as happy 
as a gold fish in glass globe ; he has as much snuff as he chooses, and I dress him up 
like a tiger whenever the Viscount drives me to the park. D'ye doubt it ? — he shall 
show you his yellow plush livery. As for my mother— that's another thing, she 



THE FIGURANTE. 95 

lives with me, and God forgive me ! if she will take care of my housekeeeping, can 
I help it — a dear old soul \" 

Who but the Figurante's mother ever believed that her daughter's face would 
win an admirer from every stall in the pit ? — who fancied that to speculate in her 
daughter's follies was but to indulge her natural freaks of merriment ? — and yet 
who but the mother of the Figurante watches with any touch of natural feeling her 
unhonored and unloved career ? In the whole existence she has to lead, there is no 
more sentiment than you would find at the bottom of a rouge-pot. She lives the 
life of a jaded mill-horse, kept to turn the wheel of public pleasure — and only 
stimulated by a little vanity and a little coquetry. Where is she to look for a nurse 
when she is ill, or an ally when she is affronted, but to her old wizened mother ? in 
return for all this, the mamma has a few perquisites in the establishment — a few pre- 
sents now and then, and the certain reversion of old gloves (which she knows how to 
clean,) old gowns (which she knows how to restore), old lace and ribbons, which 
may be refreshed, and old slippers, which she will tread down into the easiest of 
easy shoes : and besides all this, the little trifles which are not wholly valueless — 
the pins, the brooches, the necklaces, of somewhat apocryphal gold ; the smelling- 
bottles, the Sevres saucers, the perfumery, and the little instruments which are used 
to repair dilapidated beauty, or to restore departing youth — the scattered relics 
which may serve to fill a pedlar's pack with woman's finery. 

But, with all these resources, the time is creeping on, when our poor Figurante 
will find herself alone and in poverty — or with nothing but the slender wealth of 
faded good looks. The time is come, when, whether she will or not, she must needs 
resign herself to obscurity and to oblivion. Applause will come to her at most as 
often as leap-year comes : and nothing short of the approach of a comet can presage 
the portentous fact that she is about to appear in some new dumb- show part — one 
of those valuable characters, known under the name of indispensable supernumeraries. 
In fact, the Figurante can do nothing but figure. The time of her wretchedness is 
striding upon her. An illustrious philosopher once remarked, that the vicissitudes 
of all sovereignty and dominion are written down in the great book of human 
destiny — the dominion of beauty as well as the dominion of genius — of folly as well 
as of wisdom. Nothing is more true. The time comes which wears the gilding off 
the throne, and plucks the sceptre from the grasp that held it. The reign of the 
Figurante must have an end ; it cannot last for ever. She may frolic like a fairy on 
the wing, but her seventh lustre sounds from the dial of time, and she sinks under 
the irreparable encroachments of years. She undergoes an entire change : you 
knew her when she was petulant, but now she is sad and cross, and full of heavy 
thoughts. All the charm of her life was in its past — and that is gone for ever. 
Her charming figure is bloated — she grows stout ; one person might calculate her 
volume in cubic feet, another her specific gravity. How dare she go upon the 
boards ? — they would crack with her weight. Her throat has lost its sweet modu- 
lations : her lips, if she open them, the smile is changed to a grimace — in a word, 
she is thirty-five. Thirty-five ! that is to say, her cheeks have fallen in, and the 
dimple of her chin is absorbed in massive wrinkles. The roses are all withered, and 
there is a network of hard deep lines over her face. She is thirty-five — she is come 



96 



THE FIGURANTE. 



to the age when the Figurante leaves the stage, and she leaves it, as she came to it, 
unobserved, uncared-for, unattended. After having spent the better years of her life 
in this vain chace of wealth and fame, — after having wasted, like a fool, all the oppor- 
tunities of securing her condition which she ought to have embraced, she bids adieu 
to the stage, and leaves no trace behind her. She may then wait upon some 
fashionable actress, or become a candidate for the office of box-keeper in a second- 
rate theatre. But in the one condition or in the other, she receives some conso- 
lation under the chances of her life in relating them to a little circle of companions 
in misfortune, and in learning, by heart, all the novels of Paul de Koch. 





THE VIRTUOSO. 




THE VIRTUOSO. 



BY COMTE HORACE DE VIEL-CASTEL. 




=, fa DJACENT to the " Bourse,"— that splendid edifice 
by the genius of modern architects — with the 



*Q raised 



assistance of Greek patterns, and numerous masons and 
stone-cutters, stands a smaller building, which might 
be easily taken for a tenement of trivial importance, did 
not large placards inform you that it is the Auction 
. Mart, frequented by the public brokers. In that place, 
I sacred to the Company of Auctioneers, everything is put 
up to be bid for, everything is to be sold — from travelling- 
carriages down to the autograph letters of Ninon de l'Enclos. Morning and evening 
the Auction Mart is open to the public ; every one may inspect the articles to be 
disposed of ; all are at liberty to crowd round the desks of the brokers, and indulge 
themselves in the pleasure of augmenting, by a few francs or centimes only, the 
marketable value of the greatest, as well as of the most insignificant reputation 
possessed by artists, statesmen, or simple mechanics. 

It is in the Auction Mart that we meet with those isolated characters — those 
really remarkable individuals of the present age, who alone possess a certain origin- 
ality peculiar to themselves, and who alone disdain to mix with the common herd, 
in order that they may seek those paths, the grass of which is untrodden by the 
feet of the multitude. These remarkable beings are the lovers of virtu. — and by 
this phrase I mean to embrace all those whom a passion for antiquarian research, 
and a desire to obtain a collection or museum more or less considerable, of things 
fabricated by human industry, or formed by the supernal energies of the great 



98 THE VIRTUOSO. 

Creator, have launched into an arena where the victims of a ruling predilection are 
in a constant state of agitation. 

Many a time have I been tempted to make a collection myself ; and, without 
having precisely succumbed to the strength of the inducement, I must confess that 
I have often brought the intoxicating cup near enough to my lips to imbibe its 
sweets, and be initiated in its most secret mysteries. I have examined — ransacked 
— scrutinized — and observed the Auction Mart from the cellar to the garret — from 
the broker himself (that monarch puffed up with pride, infallible as the Pope, and 
affecting, like the marquises represented on the French stage, to know everything 
without having learnt a tittle) to the porters with their silver badges — those servile 
dependents on their mighty masters. 

I have known and seen the votaries of virtu themselves ; I have surprised their 
habits and their manners in the very fact of their originality ; and my mind is filled 
with reminiscences, which I am now about to embody in the form of revelation. 

As it is necessary to proceed methodically in all things, I shall begin by stating 
that there are three kinds — three species of antiquaries. 

The first is the Virtuoso whose appearance is wild and uncultured, dirty and 
ragged from head to foot, with black nails, unshaven beard, uncombed hair, battered 
hat, and capacious pockets always full. This is the true Virtuoso — the antiquary 
who collects for the sake of the collection. m 

The second class comprises those merchants who move in good society — those 
dealers in curiosities — those tradesmen whose servants wear laced liveries, and 
whose carriages are haply adorned with armorial bearings — whose manners, lan- 
guage, and habits, are those of the true Virtuoso, but who only disburse their 
money for the sake of large gains. 

The third species is the fashionable Virtuoso — he who constitutes himself a 
Virtuoso, in order to keep pace with the age, and possess, like his acquaintances, a 
drawing-room fitted up in the style of the times of Louis XV., a dressing-room in 
the fashion of the Renaissance, a dining-room of the fourteenth century, with some 
Toledo blades, a few shields, the morion of a Covenanter, a cup in which he drinks 
when with his friends, a few Flemish jugs in blue and grey earthenware, and three 
Gothic windows which intercept the rays of the sun, and only admit through the 
casement a yellow, red, or blue light, that confers upon his features the hue of a 
yellow-fever, scarlatina, or cholera morbus, should he only place himself in the way 
of the sunbeam which, falls, thus disguised, upon his arm-chair ! 

Every Virtuoso must necessarily belong to one of the three classes which I have 
just described : — the Eccentric Virtuoso, the Speculating Virtuoso, and the Fashion- 
able Virtuoso. 

Amongst the votaries of the first class — those true poets of their kind — the most 
celebrated is an old man, dry, wrinkled, shabby, slovenly dressed in a species of 
brownish great-coat, with his head covered by a black silk skull-cap, above which 
bulges out an enormous hat, of dubious colour, greasy about the brim, greasy in the 
crown, greasy in the band, greasy inside, greasy all over. This hat for the last 
thirty years has regularly accompanied its master to all the auctions, and attends 
upon him, whatever be the state of the weather, in his walks on the quays, and to 
the houses of all the dealers in rubbish and curiosities. This hat and this man are 



THE VIRTUOSO. 99 

known by the name of De Menussard. M. de Menussard possesses a most splendid 
collection of Sevres porcelain, made of soft clay. At his house — in his cupboards, 
in his closets, in his boxes, are concealed, as it were in a tomb, whole sets, trays- 
full, and vases of Sevres porcelain, made of soft clay, with the ground or borders of 
deep blue, light blue, turquoise blue, emerald green, or pink. After two years of 
research, perseverance, and anxiety, he bid for an emerald-green dinner-service 
which had belonged to the Prince de Rohan, and purchased it at the public 
auction-rooms on the Place de la Bourse, for 30,000 francs. A little tray of a 
dark-blue colour, containing five cups and saucers, and bearing the initials and 
escutcheons of King Louis XV., did not cost him less than 12,000 francs. It is, 
however, necessary to observe, that each of the cups and saucers of that tray was 
ornamented with medallions, upon which were portraits of the principal mistresses 
of the French Sardanapalus. Two vases, which had belonged to Madame du Barri, 
were also the objects of his most anxious solicitude and most persevering 
cares. These two vases, of a pale pink, surrounded by volutes and foliage skilfully 
gilded with gold of two colours, and interspersed with victorious Cupids, after 
designs by the celebrated Boucher, were in the possession of an old Marquis of 
Toulouse, to whom they had accrued no one knows how : they might have been a 
love-token ; I cannot say. At all events, the old Marquis of Toulouse would not 
part with them, and M. de Menussard longed to call them his own. He tendered 
an exorbitant price, and was refused ; he endeavoured to have them stolen for him, 
and failed in that attempt also. For two years, there was a species of smothered 
warfare between the Marquis and M. de Menussard, — active and offensive on one 
side, and defensive on the other. 

M, de Menussard is rich, well-educated, and well-born : he lives alone, shut up 
with his china-ware. He has neither carriages nor livery- servants : an old female 
acts as his housekeeper. His toilet, his food, and his lodging, cost him but little. 
He never goes to the theatre ; he has no friend ; he has never been known to keep a 
mistress ; and he has never travelled farther than Sevres. Nor to Sevres has he 
journeyed more than once ; and then he returned home on foot, fatigued, muddy, 
wet by the rain to the very skin, furious against the manufactory at Sevres, against 
the age itself, and exclaiming, with indignation, " There is neither religion nor 
creed now upon earth ! — everything is destroyed ! — a decline — a total decline ! — 
To think that one of the glories of France has been suffered to fall into decay ! — The 
barbarians — the Goths — the Visigoths — not to manufacture anything more of soft 
clay ! Hard clay — nothing but hard clay ! — It is enough to make the hair stand 
upon one's head ! " From that day, does any one dare to speak to him about the 
modern Sevres porcelain, he shrugs up his shoulders, and a bitter smile plays upon 
his lips ; but he does not utter a single word ! The soft clay is everything to him. 
When he cannot leave his lodgings, when the shops where curiosities are sold are 
closed, or when there is no auction to take place throughout Paris, it is then that 
M. de Menussard shuts himself up in the most secluded of his apartments. One by 
one he extracts from their cupboards, from their boxes, all his beautiful china, his 
plates, his dishes, his blue, pink, or green cups, or those with nosegays, medallions, 
or of a white or coloured ground : he contemplates them with admiration and with 
tenderness. Armed with a soft and fine piece of flannel, he wipes, he polishes, he 



100 THE VIRTUOSO. 

caresses them : and then, when their toilet is thus completed, he talks to them, he 
converses with them, he questions them. 

" You are now quite fine," says he, apostrophising his blue cups ; " you are now 
quite fine, little coquettes ! Yes, you carry about you the charming portraits of the 
most lovely women of your youthful days. King Louis XV. was determined that 
you should be decorated with the likenesses of his cherished mistresses ; and cer- 
tainly he would not have confided such adorable countenances to hard clay! O no ! 
It required all the fineness — all the unctuous nature — all the softness of your deli- 
cate clay, my dear little coquettes ! — to receive, in a becoming manner, the delicious 
visage of Madame de Chateauroux, the not less graceful one of the Marquise de Pom- 
padour, and the sweet, sprightly, and vivacious features of the Marquise du Barri." 

Thus shut up, thus apostrophising, and thus disporting with his beautiful porce- 
lain, M. de Menussard is the happiest of men. He falls upon his knees before it — 
he adores it — he loves it with the utmost tenderness ; and, more enthusiastic, more 
poetic than Pygmalion, he does not wish to animate his Galatea. He does not dis- 
cover a fault about her : to animate would be to despoil her — to deprive her of some 
charm ! His Galatea will never grow old ; women painted upon cups will be for 
ever young ; the nosegays on the vases and plates will remain eternally fresh and 
verdant ; nothing of all that will experience the snows of age ; the future will be 
even as the present. When Pygmalion, blinded by his enthusiasm, implored the 
gods to invest with life the worshipped object of his love, he created for it, at the 
same time, age, wrinkles, hoary locks, and death ! M. de Menussard's joy exists 
in the insensibility of his mistress, — in the materiality of his idealisation. He cre- 
ates for her all the graces which he wishes to recognize about her ; he testifies for 
her an impassioned love, which he also fills up with sacrifices ; he casts down, as a 
befitting holocaust to his soft clay, first (it is scarcely necessary to name the primal 
offerings) the hard clay, its sister, and the Queen's porcelain, its cousin ; and then 
follow the old Japanese, the old Chinese, and the old Saxe specimens, even to the 
admirable earthenware of Bernard de Palissy, the Italian workmanship of Faenza, 
with their rich paintings and their decorations after Raphael, — yes, even to the 
Delf-ware bas-reliefs of Lucas della Robbia ! 

He only knows one thing — only loves, adores, cherishes one object — and that is 
the soft clay of Sevres. The rest of the world may fall in, crumble, and he would 
not pay attention to the ruins. He never reads a newspaper ; he is not an elector ; 
does not belong to the National Guard, nor to anything of that kind ; — he is the 
admirer of the soft clay of Sevres. This passion for collecting curiosities — this 
mania — this idolatry of the soft clay of Sevres — have exiled, as it were, M. de 
Menussard from the rest of the human species, from his fellow- creatures, and from 
all mundane sentiments : they have rendered him selfish, stern, and inflexible in his 
resolutions, and miserly in everything, save the purchase of the soft clay of Sevres. 
He entertains no compassion for the poor : the recital of a great misfortune extracts 
not a tear from his eye. He would see a whole quarter of the town burning before 
he would stir an inch from his own door, or suffer himself to experience the slightest 
emotion at the catastrophe ; but if one of his cups, one of his plates, or one of his 
vases were to break, his lashes would be bathed in tears ; groans and complaints 
would escape from his bosom ; he would find in his heart a mine of poetic treasure 



THE VIRTUOSO. 101 

to deplore the loss of his cup, his plate, or his vase ; and he would be lost in asto- 
nishment were the rest of the world to remain insensible to his anguish. He would 
be capable of killing the man that should break the smallest particle of his posses- 
sions in soft clay. In fine, he would traverse conflagrations, purgatories, and the 
regions of the damned, to save the smallest saucer of soft clay that might be in 
danger of destruction ; and he would not put his feet into water to save a drowning 
child ! Love is a passion which renders ferocious those who experience it. M. de 
Menussard, with his black silk skull-cap, his greasy hat, his shabby coat, his up- 
right and tarnished hair, his beard but indifferently cared for, his hands chilled by 
perpetual contact with earthenware, and his worn-out shoes, is perhaps, of all lovers 
and admirers of this age, the most fervent, the most sincere, the most true, the most 
enthusiastic, and, on that account, the most excusable in his selfishness and ferocity. 

By the side of M. de Menussard may invariably be encountered, at the Auction 
Mart on the Place de la Bourse, a celebrated collector of autographs, who possesses 
the writing of all famous personages : but within the last month, he has laboured 
under a mortal affliction, — ten lines of Moliere's own writing escaped him, and be- 
came the property of a celebrated English amateur. He will not recover the shock ; 
his days are numbered ; he hears nothing — sees nothing, but walks about like a 
miserable wretch on whom some inveterate fatality is heavily weighing. He considers 
himself as a dishonoured individual : his collection of autographs was once reputed 
to be the finest of all collections existing, and now it is only the second in rank. 

M. de Menussard shrugs up his shoulders when he sees the collector of auto- 
graphs : he even says that he is mad. 

And, indeed, the Virtuoso in autographs, like the Virtuoso in soft clay, the Vir- 
tuoso in pictures, and all other amateurs, who carry their love of one thing to the 
passion of collecting thousands of specimens of the adored object, may be easily 
classed amongst the insane portions of those afflicted with monomania. They are 
harnessed to a single idea, and see nothing beyond it ; for all the universe, and exist- 
ence itself, are concentrated in the one idea which they pursue, and are pursued by. 

There are unknown collectors of every kind, and of every species. All Paris must 
remember that celebrated Viscount who made a collection of the most famous red 
hair, and pretended to have in his possession some of the locks of Jesus Christ. 

Another subject to the monomania of making collections, and who was laughed 
at by all the world, amassed a complete museum of the smallest female shoes that 
it was possible for him to procure. They might be seen at his house, arranged upon 
shelves, and ticketed like volumes in a library. He was acquainted with all living 
and all dead feet : a handsome foot, with a neat shoe, transported him with admira- 
tion. He would consider himself a neglectful guardian were he not to know the 
female who possessed that pretty foot : he would make all manner of inquiries con- 
cerning her ; would write to her, to put her in the way of preserving her charming 
foot ; would implore her not to use shoes too tight for her ; would point out the 
species of leather she should order her shoemaker to use for her; and would conclude 
by soliciting, as the sole recompense for so much trouble, a pair of shoes for his col- 
lection — his museum — his treasury ! 

Lord D loves nothing but snuff-boxes : he has a quantity of all kinds, and 

each is exceedingly precious. He has divided them into three classes : the boxes 



102 THE VIRTUOSO. 

of celebrated men, the boxes ornamented with images or paintings, and the boxes 
of curious materials or workmanship. He has sacrificed considerable sums to this 
really remarkable collection. He boasts with pride of being able to exhibit to the 
curious in such matters six real Blarembergs, — more than the number possessed by 
the late King of England, George IV., who was particularly fond of snuff-boxes and 
of Blarembergs. His collection of Petitots is almost as fine as that of the King of 
France ; and all his Petitots have retained their original settings, of the latter years 
of Louis XIV., — a period when they were incrusted in snuff-boxes, which served as 

royal presents. The late M. de B , a great collector of enamels, endeavoured 

for a long time to persuade Lord D to dispose of two little enamellings of 

Limoges, of a certain epoch, and faultless in design, which adorned a small snuff- 
box that was reputed to have belonged to M. Abel Poisson, the brother of the 
Marquise de Pompadour, and superintendent of finances in the reign of Louis XV. : 
but Lord D never disposes of, nor exchanges, a single thing. His entire col- 
lection of snuff-boxes is contained in a case which travels, dwells, and sleeps, if not 

absolutely with, at least near him. Lord D has undertaken two journeys to 

St. Petersburg to procure the snuff-box which formerly belonged to Catherine the 
Great, and which served as a species of frame for the portrait of Potemkin. Lord 
D has bequeathed all his snuff-boxes to a grand-nephew, upon the single con- 
dition that they are never to be disposed of, and that they should be tended with all 
the honours and care which they deserve. An annual income of £1000 sterling 
accompanies this bequest, in order to recompense the legatee for his trouble, and 
secure a continuation of those luxuries and comforts which the boxes have so great 
a right to demand. 

It would require, not a volume, but many hundreds of volumes, to describe and 
analyse the different tastes of curiosity-hunters, — to paint in true colours, and depict 
in a faithful manner, this eccentric class of individuals. These species of Diogenes, 
shut up in their tubs, demand nothing better of the world than permission to enjoy 
in freedom the light of their sun — their predilection — their Vada — their monomania ! 
One of those happy beings — those lunatics — those martyrs to a single idea — lived five- 
and- twenty years shut up with mummies ; he saw nothing but mummies ; and he at 
length looked upon them as animated creatures, living like the rest of the world, as 
his neighbours lived. To each had he given a name, by which he knew, caressed, and 
cherished it. To such a pitch did he carry his folly, that he eventually fell in love with 
a hideous corpse enveloped in bandages ; its countenance wearing a horrible expression ; 
its lips and cheeks black, haggard, faded, and dried up. He pretended that this wretched 
object was no other than the daughter of Pharaoh II., and that the box which con- 
tained it revealed its royal origin and death through the medium of hieroglyphic de- 
signs. A meeting of learned men took place ; and it was unanimously agreed that the 
mummy should be elevated to the rank of a royal mummy, and of a sacred mummy. 
From that moment, the Virtuoso, its master, entertained towards this mummy a 
greater attachment than for any of her sister mummies. He dreamt of that young 
princess : he saw her, in his dreams, playing with the waters at the source of the 
Nile, and followed by the green crocodiles, which she attracted by her sweet voice 
from the river. Indeed, never did lover adore his mistress as the Virtuoso loved his 
mummy. For some time, he was scarcely seen : he shut himself up with the 



THE VIRTUOSO. 103 

daughter of Pharaoh II., and poured forth his soul in respectful adoration at the 
feet of her dumb Royal Highness. One morning, after a cold and wet night, the 
Virtuoso found his mummy lying upon the ground. The sacred bandages were 
loosened ; the form of his beauty appeared to him unveiled for the first time, but 
broken and spoiled ; the fall it had experienced had ground it almost to powder. 
He endeavoured to raise and re-adjust one upon another the sad remains ; but — 
O horror ! — the Virtuoso became suddenly aware that his Egyptian Princess was a 
man ! This was for him a mortal blow — a nameless sorrow : he languished for some 
time, and died at last, and was interred in the coffin of his loveliest mummy ! 

Having thus faithfully described the true Virtuoso, it may not be unadvisable to 
notice the speculating or trafficking Virtuoso, who is a calculator of a certain kind — 
the disgrace of the fraternity — a horror only equalled by the idea of submitting the 
art of poetry to mathematical considerations. 

The trafficking Virtuoso, at first sight, frequently possesses the same external 
characteristics as the true Virtuoso. He displays the same ardour in the pursuit of 
curiosities — the same contempt for anything which does not relate to a collection — 
the same indifference towards the rest of the creation. He is, however, more ener- 
getic, more obstinate, more determined in his language. His costume is that of the 
learned scholar who is the most deeply attached to his classic dirt : he takes no care 
of his person — he seems to forget himself, the better to think of nothing but his 
ruling predilection. He will affect a passion; he will moan after its object: and still 
that man is only an accomplished actor, — an adroit juggler : his passion, as well as 
his collection, is only a means to further his views. 

Such an individual collects old books for a period of ten years ; he has them bound, 
enriches them with annotations, illustrates them with pictures procured here and 
there at hazard, and adds to them autographs which God only knows where he has 
picked up. Upon the fly-leaves left by the binder at the commencement of the 
volume, he scribbles the biography of the author, and affixes his baptismal and sur- 
name, together with his titles, as member of several learned societies, to the title- 
page. He has a stamp to mark the various books that pass through his hands, and 
he can tell how many editions such and such a work has gone through : he can also 
enumerate the dates and the names of the printers of those editions. Little by little, 
the booksellers and the purchasers of old volumes consider him a celebrated biblio- 
grapher ; and he writes in some learned journal a dissertation upon Aldus and the 
Elzevirs. The Society of Bibliopolists receives him into its bosom with acclamations 
and delight; the Reviews re-echo his name; the foreigner consults him with respect; 
the Minister of Public Instruction nominates him librarian of one of the public 
establishments. A few years elapse, and he is elected a member of the Institute ; 
and then no one speaks of him without prefixing to his name, as a well-merited title, 
the words — " That learned man of whom France should be proud." 

Once arrived at this point, the farce is successfully played : the collection is now 
useless, and the only quackery remaining for him to adopt is the sale ! Then will 
appear those elaborate catalogues, in which mention must be made of all the anno- 
tations so profusely scattered through his polished-up and bound books, by the 
" learned man of whom France should be proud ! " The collection will be sold for 
twenty, thirty, and frequently forty times its original value ; and the Virtuoso him- 



104 THE VIRTUOSO. 

self will pass in the eyes of the world for an erudite scholar, whose vigils are devoted 
to scientific pursuits. 

Another trafficking Virtuoso will despoil the churches of their relics and stained 
glass, the libraries of their manuscripts, and the arsenals of their arms. He will 
pillage, without remorse, all public collections ; he will pull down old ruins for the 
purpose of obtaining a few nails or capitals ; wherever he can steal anything, he will 
plunder for the benefit of his museum. He will be prodigal of his advice to artists ; 
he will obtain honourable mention in the public journals as a distinguished anti- 
quary, who sacrifices everything to his taste for the curiosities of the middle ages, 
and who wastes, squanders, and dissipates his fortune. A few charitable individuals 
will speak of putting this madman under restraint : they will pity his wife, his 
daughter, his grand -daughter, and his grand-children's children. Then, suddenly, 
on some fine morning, the trafficking Virtuoso, having prepared that which he tech- 
nically terms " a market," and having, by adroit measures, puffed up the price of his 
curiosities to the highest value possible, will decide upon disposing of his dear col- 
lection — the blood of his veins — the marrow of his bones — the flesh of his body — in 
fine, his very soul ! 

This trafficking Virtuoso began making his collection with an income of 6000 
francs, and he will leave off operations with more than 40,000, in addition to the 
reputation of a patron of the arts, and the title of Member of the Society of Anti- 
quaries. 

Having thus described the poetic and eccentric Virtuoso, whose occupations are 
the result of monomania, it only remains for me to speak of the fashionable Virtuoso; 
but a few words will suffice to depict this personage, who is neither a character, nor 
a passion, nor anything else, save a being formed by the fashionable world. The 
Count de Brevailles, the most elegant of fashionable curiosity-hunters, lately showed 
me in his armoury the sword of Joan of Arc, chased by Benvenuto Cellini, and a 
few articles of a dinner-service of earthenware, made by the admirable Bernard 
de Palissy, and bearing the date of 1508, with the initials of Louis XII. 

In conclusion, if the Virtuoso be without pretence in his passion, and devoid of 
affectation in his predilection, he more or less advances towards madness ; if he be a 
speculator, he is a quack ; and if he be fashionable, he is nothing. But were I 
honoured with a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, I would bring in a bill couched 
in the following manner : — 

" Whereas, especially within the last few years, the monuments and specimens 
of art of this country have, on all sides, and for the sole interests of curiosity- 
seekers and their collections, been pulled to pieces by degrees, be it enacted, &c. 

" Article First and Last. — Every Virtuoso is condemned to the perpetual sur- 
veillance of the high police." 





THE DUCHESS. 



BY M. DE COURCHAMPS. 




NDER the old regime, a Duchess was a personage set 
apart in the social and aristocratic order of things in 
France, — a distinct species of the female genus, — a 
star of the first magnitude in the Court firmament. 
The Duchess had all the honours of the Louvre and 
the " tabouret*," to say nothing of her title of " well- 
beloved cousin" of his Majesty, and her privilege of 
sitting enthroned under a canopy of state, whenever it 
was her gracious pleasure to grant an audience to her 
feudal bailli, or her fiscal proctors. The Duchess surrounded her state bed with a 
gilded balustrade ; and the roof of her coach was covered with a drapery of crimson 
velvet, fringed with gold, which hung down at the four corners with tassels of the 

* The honours of the " tabouret," or stool, consisted in the right accorded to Duchesses of re- 
maining seated in the presence of the Royal Family of France, upon ceremonial occasions. Certain 
honours of the entrees to the Palaces of the Louvre and Versailles were also reserved to Duchesses, 



106 THE DUCHESS. 

richest manufacture. The Duchess of Leuxignem (erroneously pronounced and 
written " Lusignan") was as renowned for the splendour of her carriage draperies 
as for the stiffness of her stately figure, the gravity of her lordly physiognomy, and 
the aridity which pervaded her whole figure. The Duchess, moreover, hoisted upon 
the top of her coat-of-arms, as a sign of her quality, a coronet of nine acanthus 
leaves, with nine precious stones of different colours in the circlet of the said 
coronet, — a decoration which never failed to dazzle every passer-by, when the 
panels of her coach had been blazoned by the Sieur Ouvray, who excelled in the 
arrangement of heraldic devices, as appears from the principal writers of the time. 
Ermine was also reserved for ducal personages ; for it is as well to remark, that 
though the Presidents a mortier had the presumption to spread a mantle under 
their coats-of-arms, it was a scandalous innovation ; and, after all, these mantlings 
of the red-robed men of law were never lined with spotted ermine ; and that, at 
least, was one point gained for the consolation of the whole band of Duchesses. 
There was no idea, then, of that Lais of modern times, who has covered the most 
secret recess of her apartments with a carpet of " spotted" ermine, in all the splen- 
dour of a ducal mantle, if we may believe the report of all our young Alcibiades of 
the day. 

Ever since the times of Moliere, there have been " fagots" of manifold variety* ; 
but, now-a-days, the diversity to be remarked in " the Duchess" is as sharply 
defined again, as that which may be found in fagots, chips, or any other bundles of 
firewood. In order to treat the subject with all due accuracy, it would be as well, 
perhaps, to commence by dividing and subdividing " the Duchess," like every other 
organized substance, or subject of natural history, — that is to say, according to the 
classification of "genus" and "species," and all the other varieties of scientific 
division. The Duchess of the first class, or primitive genus, is evidently the Duchess 
of the ancien regime-, the Duchess of secondary rank is the Duchess of the Restora- 
tion ; and the Duchess of the Empire, according to our theory, can only be placed 
upon the third line. 

Among the twenty- seven or twenty-eight Duchesses of the haute noblesse, there 
are not more than one or two who have a box at the Italian Opera ; there are two 
or three who visit a theatre once or twice during the Carnival ; there are ten or a 
dozen who never quit their noble quarter of the town, — that peaceable, aristocratic, 
and virtuous extent of territory, which forms the Faubourg St. Germain, and is 
comprised between the Rue des Saints Peres, the Rue de Vaugirard, the Esplanade 
of the Invalids, and the Quai d'Orsay, not to mention here the Quai des Theatins, 
which some people have chosen to modernize into the Quai Voltaire ; and when, 
towards the end of January, the topic is discussed of a round of visits to be made in 
the Faubourg St. Honore, you might almost suppose yourself at the other end of 
France, and imagine that there was a talk of a voyage to Newfoundland. 

There was once upon a time an unhappy Duchess, who was ordered by M. 
Trousseau, a fashionable " larangipharmacical" doctor of the day, to transport her 

* An allusion to the well-known words of Sganarelle, the wood-cutter, in the " Medecin rnalgre lui" 
of Moliere, " 11 y a fagot et fagot." This saying has become a proverb in the French language, 
in constant use where a distinction is to be drawn in a ludicrous sense. 



THE DUCHESS. 107 

penates to the Chaussee d'Antin*, because she was threatened with a complaint in 
the larynx, which rendered it necessary for her to be sheltered from the north wind 
by the hillock of Montmartre. She had the advantage and comfort of being lodged 
close by her doctor ; but never was woman of quality more completely out of her 
element, more mortified, and more overwhelmed with all the pains attendant upon a 
state of ostracism. She died of it at the end of the week, exhausted by grief. 

The Duchess of the ancien regime is naturally credulous : she hesitates between 
the famous somnambulist of the Croix Rouge and the modern iEsculapius of the 
Rue Taranne, — in other words, between magnetism and homoeopathy. She expects, 
also, with much impatience, the year 1840 ; and to those who are acquainted with 
the prophecy of St. Randgairef, there is no reason to explain why. 

As to her political opinions, her Grace has not got beyond 1788 ; and her literary 
tastes are pretty nearly those of the Regency. Her two favourite authors are 
still MM. d'Arnauld-Baculard and De Tressan.J Her last new-year's-gift to her 
eldest grandson, who is twenty-nine years old, was a charming copy of " The Trials 
of Sentiment," followed by " The Idle Hours of a Man of Feeling/' richly bound in 
vellum, with the family coat-of-arms embossed and gilt upon the covers. As she is 
fully persuaded that Baroness de Stael and Countess de Genlis were, more or less, 
democrats, she has never chosen to read a single line of their works, and will inform 
you, if necessary, that " the bare idea is beneath her." 

Questions of genealogy, heraldry, and court ceremony, are almost the only topics 
which are not considered unworthy her attention ; and, as may be well supposed, in 
the presence of a devote, there is no question of ever repeating anecdotes of the 
nature in fashionable circulation in Parisian society. The good lady is consequently 
reduced to conversations upon quarterings and chapters, redemptions of lineage, and 
feudal rights of rendering justice. She is fully aware of the importance and signi- 
fication of the bar sinister, as well as of " defamation" for an eagle without a beak, 
or a lion deprived of claws, which, as all the world knows, has always arisen from 
degradation or forfeiture. For a length of time, she held frequent dissertations 
upon the imperial eagle of Bonaparte, whose neck had been given a bend sinister by 
the Herald's College of the Revolution, — a circumstance which made of the unlucky 
eagle a oiseau contourne', which, in all true heraldry, signifies bastardy. This was a 
triumph which she enjoyed, it must be allowed, with an air of infernal malice and 
satanic delight. 

It was about the end of the year 1816, as far as I can recollect, that the Dowager 
Duchess of Castel-Morand, having had the annoyance of finding herself, at the re- 
ception of a Minister of the legitimate King of France, in company with a quantity 
of those military upstarts whom a brother soldier had tricked out with the title of 
" Duke," took a most absurd fancy into her head, as she said, — the curiosity to 

* The quarter of Paris inhabited chiefly by the rich banking and commercial world, and monied 
aristocracy of the day. 

f The famous legitimist prophecy alluded to is couched in the following terms : — " X. ann. post 
XXX. ante nativ. Domini prostratum viderat perversum et ultimum usurpatorem. Lilia floresce- 
runt in Gallia." 

X Two noble and namby-pamby authors of the last century. 



108 THE DUCHESS. 

know, in fact, what were the real names of those titled plebeians, who had been just 
authorized by the " Charte " to assume, alas ! the same designation as that with 
which her own family had been decorated by King Louis the Just. Her request was 
respectfully acceded to : a committee was formed around her ; and, with the aid of 
the Imperial Almanac, means were at last found to affix, with very tolerable accu- 
racy, each of these foreign duchies to its imperial title-holder. " It is perfectly 
clear," exclaimed her Grace, after a dissertation which lasted for an hour and a half 
at the least ; " and I am now as well informed upon the subject as your Messieurs 
de Montesquieu* could be. Mortier is Massena; Madame Ney is Elizabeth of Friuli, 
or of Corinthia, just as one might say Eleonora of Aquitain, or Blanche of Castile ; 
and General Suchet is Montebello. I do not recollect the rest ; and I ask to know 
no more. Many thanks for your kindness and erudition." 

Among the Duchesses of the ancien regime, it is as well to mention the hereditary 
Duchess. This variety of the Duchess in expectation is naturally progressive in her 
tastes and opinions, very generally " Anglomanist," and almost always a blue- 
stocking. All her men-servants are powdered, like so many figures of the last 
century at a masquerade ; and he who serves as valet- de-chambre is expected to 
assume all the airs of a " groom of the chamber." As may be naturally supposed, 
her daughters have English governesses ; and she herself never speaks anything but 
English, although neither her mother nor her husband knows a word of the language. 
She can eat nothing, with pleasure, but English dishes, with downright English 
names, although her husband, who is a thorough Frenchman, would be very glad to 
see her eat sometimes a pigeon a la crapaudine, or a poulet en fricasse'. His melon, 
which, in true French fashion, he has always been accustomed to eat after his soup, 
he never can get before the dessert ; and then, to maintain domestic peace, he is 
obliged to eat it with ginger. His daily soup, also, is prepared d, VAnglaise, with 
pepper and spice ; but this excellent husband, although he never fails to groan in- 
wardly at this affliction, never thinks of rebelling. Never was easier-tempered soul 
invested with ducal honours of the dais and plumed bed-tester ! 

As soon as this fair lady hears the treble ring of the porter's bell to announce a 
visit, she snatches up an English paper, of the largest dimensions, to read ; and the 
conversation turns infallibly upon the last Almack's ball, or Prince Louis Napoleon 
and his dinners, followed up by agreeable and interesting dissertations upon Count 
d'Orsay's latest fashion, Crockford's, the last bet, steeple-chases, or cock-fighting. 
When you are not condemned to hear a biographical or literary article from the pen 
of any English lady- authoress <X la mode, you may be happy at getting off so well. 
Never think of complaining ; and, above all, never accuse any one, whoever he may 
be, of " Anglomanie." It is a vile expression, which would be sure to give the most 
shocking opinion of you. Such a barbarous accusation can only be compared to an 
act of the most atrocious malice, or the most odious brutality. 

It may be easily conceived, that in her Grace's apartments, which are always 
filled with English ladies, there is plenty of scandal going on ; and were I not 
the thirty- three -thousandth homoeopathic particle of " the politest nation in the 

* Descendants of one of the most ancient families in France, one of whom became Master of the 
Ceremonies, and the other Aide-de-Camp, in the Court of Napoleon. 



THE DUCHESS. 109 

universe," I might hazard the observation, that invariably, in a house full of English- 
women, there is sure to be no end of mischievous tittle-tattle. 

Whenever the Duchess in question takes an airing in the Bois de Boulogne, her 
carriage is carefully supplied with an inkstand, the best English pens, a writing-case, 
and some richly- embossed letter-paper ; and she has always a mass of pamphlets, 
books in boards, Keepsakes, Landscape Annuals, and English Reviews, heaped up 
around her. When she enters any other drawing-room than her own, it not un- 
frequently occurs that certain dandies mutter between their teeth the appellation of 
"Blue Stocking ;" while their physiognomies, well studied in the present fashionable 
air of gloomy indifference, receive an unusual degree of animation from their ex- 
pression of somewhat discourteous mockery. It is, however, due to the illustrious 
lady upon whom this epithet of " Blue Stocking" is bestowed with more or less of 
justice and propriety, to add, that her stockings are nevertheless of the usual white- 
ness ; and this is perhaps the only affinity which may be found to subsist between 
this superior being and women of a common order — between the Duchess who 
studies Chinese, and the Parisian Bourgeoise who reads Paul de Koch. 

We must not forget to make especial mention of the Duchess of Blancimiers, 
with all her political and martial propensities — the enthusiastic royalist — the im- 
petuous and ardent spirit — the lady of high lineage, whose ancestors, seven genera- 
tions back, were present at the combat of the Thirty Men of Britany, under the 
chestnut trees of Ploermel, in 1351.* I am not able to tell you whether it was in 
capacity of bonne amie, nurse, nursery-maid, governness, or foster-sister of the young 
Beaumanoir — for that is a matter of biographical research which I have never been 
able to explain to my satisfaction. I do not at all contest that she may have been 
his relation or his godmother : the historians of Britany say nothing whatever upon 
the subject, it is true, but I have no desire to have an affair with her great grand- 
daughter in the seventh degree, who is Baroness of Kergumadec-en-Penthievre, 
and still remains Hereditary Marshal of the district of Cornwall (in Britany), in 
spite of the manifold revolutionary injunctions, called " decrees of the Constituent 
Assembly," and in expectation of the return of — you know who. No one can 
submit himself to the laws of Septemberf with more perfect docility than I. 

The Duchess of Blancimiers has taken " Beaumanoir bois-ton-sang " for her cry of 
war : she pays no heed whatever to the life of others, and attaches not the least 
importance to the life of a man. I can assure you that she overwhelms with her 
bitterest hatred and contempt all those who do not heed her dictates, and are not 
inclined to go and get killed — without ever knowing why. The Duchess de Blan- 

* During the English campaign in France, under Edward III., and in the beginning of the reign 
of King John of France, the two armies being utterly exhausted by the long duration of the war, it 
was agreed upon that the victory should he decided by a combat between two parties of thirty 
men chosen from either side. The combat took place near Ploermel, in Britany, and the victory 
remained on the side of the French. A temporary truce was the result of this affair. It was on 
this occasion that one of the combatants of the family of Beaumanoir crying out, " I am athirst," 
was answered, " Bois ton sang" — " drink thine own blood." This expression remained afterwards 
attached to the family name of Beaumanoir, as alluded to further on. 

t The famous laws respecting the French press, in which a prohibition is established against de- 
fending the rights of the elder branch of the Bourbons. 



110 THE DUCHESS. 

cimiers is a legitimist of the fashion of the Gothic ages : she is completely the 
Syrene-aux-meutrieres, or the Fairy Machicoulis of Palmerin d' Olive or Sir Laun- 
celot du Lac. There are times when she resolutely establishes several young 
Vendeans in her old tower of Auvent and her dependencies of Mazulet with a quantity 
of white cockades and a few rusty muskets ; and then one fine day she sends all her 
"Jeune France" to the Rue des Prouvaires* with about as much foresight and good 
sense as common charity : and, when they have been shot down, cannonaded, 
hashed in pieces, what do you think this generous lady does for those few of the 
brave fellows who have escaped being killed, and have been condemned to death 
par contumace, or in reality thrown into chains as galley-slaves ? She contrives to 
send to each of these poor exiles and prisoners a brass ring engraved with a figure 
of St. Michael treading under foot the Gallic cock — a famous recompence, I trow. 
Its as well, however, to remark that the Florentine rings have been sculptured by the 

aristocratic hands of Mademoiselle Felicia de F , and that each of these brass 

ornaments is a veritable chef d'ceuvre in the style of the Renaissance. 

We have, moreover, the artist Duchess, who considers herself a landscape painter, 
and paints nothing but earthquakes in water colours. She is supposed to be 
Bonapartist, and a liberal, and fancies herself even obliged to be in a degree 
Philippist, seeing that her father was chamberlain to Madame Eliza Bacciochi.f 
"Abyssus abyssum invocat," said the royal prophet. The following is the list 
and explanatory catalogue of several drawings, which this accomplished and talented 
female sent for the inspection of the Examining Committee for this year's Exhibition. 
It will be easy enough to recognize the admirable style which always distinguishes 
the getting up and compiling of the catalogues issued by the " Musee Royal." 

No. 1. A view taken in the Bois de Boulogne, near the meer of Auteuil, as may 
be easily perceived by the vigour of the vegetation and the beauty of the landscape. 

No. 2. Study intended for the new house to be erected for the monkeys in the 
Jardin des Plantes, Sketch in black-lead. 

No. 3. Perspective view of the High Street of Vaugirard, in Indian ink, bistre, 
and sepia, after the English method. Unfinished water-colour drawing. 

No. 4. Sketch of the Lougsor (otherwise Luxor) obelisk. The ground of the 
monolith is in red chalk — the hieroglyphics touched in, in gouache. 

No, 5. The interesting and innocent family of General M finding, in a bower, 

a bird dead upon the seat. The figures are by M. Tancred Mitron. 

No. 6. A view of the Canal de l'Ourcq by sunset. The edifice to the left is 
the large and splendid manufactory of Messrs. Prestel and Napoleon Godard, 
fabricators of preserved onions for flavouring soups in small families. 

After all the sketches and unfinished drawings admitted by the examining com- 
mittee of the Exhibition, for the gratification of the Parisian public, the honours of 
entrance to the Louvre were necessarily accorded to those of her Grace : but they 
were not placed in a sufficiently favourable light, and she is terribly angry with 
M. CayeuxJ, unhappy man, on that account. 

* The street in Paris in which the legitimist conspiracy of 1831 first broke out. 

t Sister to Napoleon, and, under the Empire, Grand Duchess of Parma and Piacenza. 

X One of the directors of the Gallery of the Louvre. 



THE DUCHESS. Ill 

Due notice ought to be taken of the Duchess of Sangi Mele, but I have already- 
gone to a great length in treating of the Duchess of the Ancien Regime, and we 
have still before us those who are habitually styled the Duchesses of Bonaparte. 

Among the notabilities of the Republic and the Usurpation, there are some who 
have poisoned themselves in their soup ; there are others who have embarked with 
their whole family to pay a neighbourly visit to Lady Hester Stanhope, somewhere 
near the ruins of Palmyra ; others, who have carried on a smuggling trade in tobacco, 
and potato brandy : others, again, who have written books against all the rules of 
common sense : but it is not of such exceptions that we write, and we return to the 
general indications of the species. 

The type of the " illustrations" of the Revolution — that is to say, the veritable 
" Duchess of the Empire," is a Bourgeoise who is always talking about " my aunt, 
the queen," when she might as well say, " my grandfather, the hosier." She 
generally bears such a name as Duchess of Gertrudenberg, Princess of the Danube : 
but as the Danube is a principality, which is no less than five hundred leagues in 
length, and one hundred and twenty feet in breadth, there are several of the 
sovereigns of Europe who are by no means inclined to admit the right of the princess 
to her title. The Frankfort Diet and the Prussian Government contest, in primis, 
her ducal and territorial title. M. de Munch-Bellinghausen, the President of the 
Germanic Diet, declares that such a concession would demand a protocol of the 
most exotic, anarchical, and inadmissible nature : and Prince Metternich cracks an 
infinity of German jokes upon the subject, which are doubtless the cleverest things 
in the world. In fact, among all the dwellers upon the Danube banks, the Grand 
Turk alone does not withhold his recognition — another proof of the resignation of 
the Sultan. " Allah Akbar !" says the Father of the Faithful, " the river Danusbi 
flows none the less for that into my Sultan seas." 

As may be well supposed, it is not very feasible for the Duchess of Gertrudenberg 
to visit the Ambassadors of Prussia and Austria in Paris : and the same reasons 
prevent her travelling in Germany or in Italy, where, by the way, her two friends, 
the Duchesses of Orvietta and Bergamasco, would be in precisely the same predica- 
ment. It would be easy enough for them, it may be said, to escape any diplomatic 
interdiction of the kind, upon taking out their passports ; but then it is they them- 
selves who cannot condescend to travel incognito under their own family name, or 
that of their husbands. How is it possible in fact to allow oneself to be called 
Couture ( of the department of the Manche) or Pholoe Colin, a Tampon by birth, 
when one is Duchess of Orvietta ? " The Emperor had settled matters as they 
ought to be. But patience ! the time may still come : and when his nephew is 
President of the French Republic, you'll see if the Austrians are not served out in 
their turn !" 

As is natural enough to conclude, the Duchess of Gertrudenberg (formerly 
Ma'm'selle Tautin) has not been so fortunate as to preserve her ducal appanage of 
a hundred and fifty thousand francs a year, instituted upon lands in the Rhenish 
Provinces, by H. M. the Emperor of the French, for the benefit of her husband, and 
established upon the domains of the King of Prussia — h perpetuiU, of course. Is it 
possible to conceive so complete a perversion of all justice on the part of the King 



112 THE DUCHESS. 

of Prussia, such a total contempt for aristocratic rights, and the decrees of Napo- 
leon ? According to the disinterested opinion of the illustrious widow, the King of 
Prussia is " the most wicked wretch that ever existed." Although she has lost her 
ducal appanage in Westphalia, she has managed to keep her six or seven millions of 
fortune, acquired in gratuitous endowments ; and all the world at Paris may remark 
that she is not the less brilliant in the illuminations of her gateway on St. Philip's 
day, and other little anniversaries of the juste milieu. The Duchess of the Empire 
is essentially friendly to any order of things which does not recall the least trace of 
the ancien regime. Her political opinions are always decided by the simplest prin- 
ciples : her only rule of conduct is to approve and to adopt whatever can vex the 
legitimist party, or annoy the " Faubourg St. Germain." 

The Duchess of the new regime is astonishingly ignorant ; but then to make 
amends she has an immense stock of haughtiness and very little esprit. In stating 
that the Duchesses of the Empire are ignorant of a great many things, it would be 
as well, however, to put forward an undeniable document in support of this observa- 
tion. One of these ladies considered herself entitled to put upon Napoleon the 
reproach of having compromised his partizans by his headstrong ambition. "He 
has contrived," she said, "to have us all ruined, overthrown, crushed, and almost 
annihilated in consequence of his obstinacy and his mania for fighting. And yet 
we know well enough that he might have got himself out of the scrape and us at 
the same time : for although he lost his crown and his title of Emperor, he might 
have made the most superb conditions ; and the Bourbons were so afraid of him, 
that he might have been, if he had liked, ' Constable of Montmorency.' "* 

As a contrast to these strange and singular notabilities — grotesque types, one 
might almost say, of their times — I might place the portrait of a young and charming 
Duchess, a brilliant and elegant woman, whose fine title becomes her to admiration 
— as would be allowed without any difficulty in all the salons of Paris. She has all 
the splendour of some Gothic ornament of jewellery, with the simplicity and grace 
of a field-flower : but whether she be a Duchess of ancient nobility or one of the 
new aristocracy is more than I can tell you, as it is a question I never asked myself. 
There are certain persons in whose presence any idea of this nature, or, to speak 
more correctly, of this conventional kind, never occurs. Beauty, talent, and modest 
dignity, combined with kind gentleness of disposition and mild virtue, naturally 
take precedence of all other considerations. " Is it more advantageous to be of high 
birth, or to be so distinguished that no one would think of asking whether you 
were or not ?" Such was the question asked by La Bruyere, in 1693, and I can- 
not discover that the doctrines of general philosophy have made any great progress 
in French society for the last hundred and fifty years. 

* The Duchess of the Empire in question alludes to the offer made by Louis XVIII. when in 
exile, to Napoleon, to place him at the head of the army with the title of " Constable of France," in 
case of his favouring the Restoration, and she is supposed to confound the title with the family 
name of the more distinguished constables of France, the " Connetables de Montmorency." 




THE MIDWIFE. 



BY L. ROUX. 




j^fO UPPOSE yourself in one of the most frequented streets 
of Paris : you see before you a young person in a green 
plaid shawl — her cap smartly trimmed with amber- 
coloured ribbons, telling of the gaiety of sweet eighteen. 
You follow her by instinct — life in Paris is liable to 
such aberrations. Believing she will lead you to the 
gates of the Conservatory*, you yield yourself up to a 
thousand bright illusions : the turn of her graceful 
ankle gives you hope of a dancer, and there is 
nothing in her face to forbid the fancy that she may sing. Her whereabouts is not 
exactly that which has occupied your mind; your first step was taken thoughtlessly, 
nor have you deeply reflected on your second : you make a third, and find yourself 
face to face with — the College of Obstetric Science ! — your sylphid is a Midwife ! 
Nothing looks so like a student of medicine as a mere lounger, and you are received 
with no other introduction than that of your giddy-looking visage into the Lecture - 
hall of Lucinda. Monsieur Hatin's course of Lectures is about to begin ; the young 
pupil's blushes have been called forth in the interval by the sly allusions of the 
students around her, — language of gallantry, not in the programme. She loses no 
time, nevertheless, in placing herself beneath the JEgis, of Science on the first bench 
of the amphitheatre. The Professor arrives, and the sparkling nonsense of the 
moment before is no longer permitted; the Pupil is given wholly to the Profession — 

* The Academy of Music. 



114 THE MIDWIFE. 

she listens with her very eyes, and it would seem hardly possible to distract her 
the least in the world from this excess of attention. She is more than separated 
from the medical student, — she is absolutely distinct from him ; yet the wisdom of 
the two colleges not sufficing to place the gentler disciple out of reach of the 
students' tricks, the Faculty has lately acknowledged that there was a crying ne- 
cessity for the isolation of the former, even though the fair neophyte should thereby 
learn less than when the students themselves attended the same lectures. The 
Professors having thus decided on giving up all but the lovelier portion of their 
auditory, let us hope that morality has gained all that science may have lost by this 
arrangement. 

Art proceeds but by slow steps: the noviciate of the " Sage-femme" has its 
difficulties : she is destined to appear before a jury of physicians : there is a prize 
for her, as there formerly was for the May Queen : women having usually no dis- 
tinction but that of merit, it is only fair to keep a strict account of all exceptions. * 

The profession of the Midwife is neither artistical nor poetical, but very medical, 
and eminently useful. The surgeons of all ages have borne off all distinguished 
patients, and this is the reason why midwives have so few occasions for displaying 
any marked superiority. Prejudice has condemned them, with a few honourable 
exceptions, to be merely the shadow — the ape of the doctor. 

Devoted generally to the service of the lower classes, the Midwife inhabits the less 
fashionable districts : third floors are her common haunt ; nay, when the interests 
of her patientry are concerned, she mounts to the most aerial regions, and comes 
sometimes in close contact even with the tiles ! Ladies of this profession pay their 
rent when it pleases Heaven to increase the number of its creatures, and Nature 
herself is not more punctual than the landlord is in his demand. 

There are midwives who are " Grand Crosses" of their " Order," and this without 
counting those who by an hyperbole more or less exaggerated are pleased to call 
themselves so. A " sage-femme" of any experience has only to find a credulous 
listener, and with the help of a system of mnemonics wholly peculiar to herself, she 
will recall the various personages whom she has favoured with an introduction to 
the daylight. If you listen to her, she was not without influence on the arrival of 
the King of Rome, and was consulted on the birth of the Duke of Bordeaux. The 
number of " noble existences" in the product of which she has taken part in the 
course of her life almost amounts to a miracle. But if you will have the truth, 
the importance of the Midwife is highly problematical : the surgeons say that her 
acquirements are next to nothing ; she is only called by those who wish to dispense 
with a surgeon. There are certain sensibilities, and, above all, certain purses, that 
shrink alarmed from the " titled learning," in " coat and cane," of the doctor; they 
fear being unable to pay his fees. The Midwife presents herself, even where 
she knows she shall never be paid ; she has the reputation of being a kinder crea- 
ture than the gentleman of the diploma, — -perhaps, because she receives from more 
hands, because her revenues have more numerous sources — for the Midwife will 
accept a present. The surgeon has only his fee — when he has that. These little 
gifts, authorized by custom, form at length a good round sum • they make up no 
bad income. Some people think less of neglecting payment of a debt than of 
the acquittal of these honorary obligations. Custom is more despotic than law. It 



THE MIDWIFE. 115 

is the Midwife, too, who, in concert with the godmother, contrives to make of the 
baptismal ceremony the most important of all family gatherings. 

A sign, well known to every one, and presenting, for the most part, a gaily- 
dressed matron holding a newly-born infant in her arms, forms an integral part of 
the Midwife's establishment ; but it is just to remark, that her actual face differs 
very sensibly from that on her picture. You would be deceived should you apply 
here the axiom " ut pictura poesis." In the first place, the embroidery, painted 
white, loses nothing of its virgin purity by exposure to the weather and the action 
of the air; and secondly, it may happen that the " sage-femme" who appears on the 
" picture" in all the lustre of her youth and beauty, has been cultivating her 
"patientry" from time immemorial. The sign never grows old! It happens, too, 
sometimes, that a " portraiture" is picked up second-hand, and though representing 
a blonde, is adopted with but little scruple by the most piquant brunette ; — the 
babies, however, care but little for the difference, — the discrepancy is no bar to 
success. We should observe, by the way, that all Midwives should be pupils of 
the " Maternity Hospital," and are so — in their pictures. 

Every street offers one of these " insignia," where the eternal smile is stereotyped 
on the lips of both midwife and infant. To have a "picture," is the privilege of 
the " sage-femme ;" but, unhappily, any advantage there may be in this mode of 
advertisement is in a great measure lost by its frequent occurrence. 

Have you the curiosity to ask, what is the cause which throws into a learned and 
unusual path, so many women born to be the ornaments of some city-circle ? — what 
concealed and irresistible power has torn them from their vocation of milliners, waiting- 
maids, companions, &c, to make " sages-femmes" of them? Ah! that belongs to the 
most profound mysteries of life on the left bank of the Seine. One, for example, has 
a cousin — a friend, who is a student of medicine ; she begins with an attachment to 
the surgeon, she ends by loving the art. Things go much in the same way in the 
faculty of law : many women are as profound in the code as was Eloise in scholastic 
learning. The Midwife is the Grisette emancipated — it is she who, while Monsieur 
Ernest was at lectures, read Boerhaave with enthusiasm, and fell into exstacies over 
a chapter of Lisfranc, as others might do over a romance of La Chapelle. This 
solidity of judgment determined Monsieur Ernest at last to make sacrifices. En- 
dowed with moderate ambition, and with a fortune more moderate still, he consented 
to establish a partnership with a pupil formed by his own hand : they took their 
degrees on the same day at the College of Surgeons, and then gave them the addi- 
tional stamp of marriage before the proper authorities : it is thus that small medical 
fortunes are gained, and that the obstetric art makes fresh progress every day. 

But the contrary, also, is known to occur ; — the Midwife, early and essentially 
vowed to her vocation, gives existence, under favourable circumstances, to many 
medical " celebrities." — A certain member of the Faculty was remarkable only for 
his threadbare coats and au immense idea of the high destinies in store for him. 
He was distinguished by a " sage-femme," who possessed a recipe which he puffed 
to the tune of some thousand advertisements. To make himself lord of the midwife's 
heart and her recipe at one blow, was the master-stroke of the doctor. Paracelsus 
made astrology the substitute for all the other sciences, — advertising was the 
universal panacea of the new alchemist. Arrived at the apex of fortune and 



116 THE MIDWIFE. 

celebrity, he forgot the woman who had raised him to it ; but, outraged at his 
want of gratitude to her, she took up her pen, and the world became enlight- 
ened by the " Memoirs of a Midwife." The " Biography of Midwives," a 
work of the same character, contains, as we would very willingly believe, a fair 
number of celebrated names ; yet many who distinguish themselves in this profession 
are far enough from being irreproachable ; and to tell the whole truth as to what 
concerns some of them, would be to give you a satire rather than a mere picture of 
manners. 

This profession has its " locusts," — women of indifferent character, although 
sworn midwives, — having long lived much nearer to indigence than to a decent com- 
petency, and arriving at fortune at last by a road the very opposite to the right one. 
Though their trade is to assist at the developement of life, they make every possible 
effort to conceal the arrival of all such candidates for existence as have been too 
early inscribed on the catalogue of humanity. If, following the traces of Parent 
du Chatelet, you have the courage to make yourself the resigned and patient chro- 
nicler of Parisian vices, the Midwife can teach you more on that subject than any 
other person. 

The Midwife of doubtful reputation, — she who is the disciple of La Voisin, and 
who, in urgent cases, is but little troubled by conscience, — becomes frequently the 
wife of an herbalist. It is a well-considered marriage : she can thus have the 
simples she requires within her reach, and she is learned in the use of them, to say 
nothing of the abuse. In Paris more especially, occasions of this sort but too 
frequently arise. Temptation presents itself armed with a purse and a sophism, 
and infanticide is committed to ward off dishonour. Physicians have vainly declared 
this mode of treatment to be a species of poisoning. Many midwives know as much 
about all that as the surgeons themselves : it is for that very reason that they con- 
tinue to carry on this practice. It suffices to them that they possess the power, — 
they make no scruple as to using it. The sums received, or to be received, are cal- 
culated much more exactly than the consequences of an atrocity. The victim fears 
dishonour more than death ; her accomplice loves money better than honesty. These 
are the criminals, in our opinion, when a crime of this sort is committed, — the mid- 
wife, who risks the condemnation of the law; the unhappy woman, who braves death, 
and who suffers it, sooner or later, from the more or less immediate consequences 
of her weakness ; and society, which, ever-armed for vengeance, punishes her fallen 
daughter too severely by the force of opinion, and thus drives her to the commission 
of a double suicide. After all, we see the same crimes arise from the same 
causes, through all the epochas of a highly- advanced civilization. If history is to 
be believed, the manners of Athens were not exempt from this fearful taint. The 
Greek women were deeply versed in medicine. The matrons were the almost ex- 
clusive assistants at child-birth ; and Lais and Aspasia deepened to darker tints the 
evil reputation arising from their immoral conduct, by assisting those addicted to 
the same irregularities to conceal the turpitude of their lives. 

Now, if these departures from morality formed the exception in our manners, the 
better way had been to be silent on the subject; but since they are, on the contrary, 
one of the endemic diseases of society as now constituted, a remedy should be sought 
for them. We leave this reflection to be worked out and acted on by the moralist. 



THE MIDWIFE. 



117 



The Midwife who keeps a boarding-house is at the same time the Harpocrates 
and the Hippocrates of her art : her discretion is become proverbial ; none would 
set foot in her dwelling if they thought there were any danger of being seen there : 
she is the friend of those rich bachelors who hope to preserve their social position, 
while they shrink from the noblest of those duties that devolve on all well- 
principled members of society. Many rich proprietors have more confidence 
in some " sage-femme" of a district, at prudent distance from their own, than in 
the mayor of their arrondissement* ; and prefer a disgrace which they must continue 
to conceal, to a household which they would have to govern in the character of 
heads of families. Society, which withers so many things less worthy of blame, 
has it ever put these men under its ban ? It is true that the midwives are so dis- 
creet ! And then, too, even society considers a rich man as a man to be treated 
with observant respect. — Prudent society ! 

But it is not enough that a Midwife should possess the unlimited confidence of 
her patients, and should be advantageously known to all those who confide to such 
as she is, what they desire to conceal from all the world besides : she must be capable 
of anticipating confidences, — of maintaining relations with incipient scandals. Paris 
is an invaluable asylum for the provinces, as the country is a convenient retreat for 
the accidents of Parisian life. The Midwife who keeps a boarding-house throws her 
nets out in the form of advertisement, and baits her hooks with modest words of 
course. Nothing is demanded from persons in the condition of servants, except per- 
haps their assistance in the house for such periods as may be agreed on : it is, how- 
ever, as well for you to present yourself with your savings in your hand. It is 
quite enough for the Midwife to give her address, with some philanthropic formula 
tacked to it : all those interested in such matters know how of themselves to make 
appeal to her professional acquirements. No one is known in her establishment. 
All ladies have some name or other of course; the chandler's daughter is a countess, 
no less : women of title call themselves Louisa, or Seraphina ; those who come from 
the most distant provinces have their residence in the capital ; the Parisian, on the 
contrary, lives " far in the country :" almost all have husbands in some island of 
the South Seas ; and each affects to believe the other, in order to avoid being ques- 
tioned in her turn. To conclude : the house of the Midwife is a Thebaid — it is 
situated at the end of an immense court-yard ; her porter is deaf and dumb ; and all 
her windows are skylights. One must show a fair appearance to be received into 
her gynesium. All visits to the respectable matronage therein are severely forbidden : 
against man, she has promulgated an edict of perpetual banishment. 

There is no profession in which more weight is derived from personal character 
than in that of the Midwife. If, in addition to the virtues proper to her sex, she 
possess the acquirements needful to her profession, she will presently enjoy an irre- 
proachable reputation in her neighbourhood, and will secure a comfortable income. 
Her " patiently" will have cost her certain sacrifices of pride; she has found it 
needful to keep on good terms with the porters ; she must not alienate, by too for- 
bidding a dignity, the good graces of that important personage, the nurse ; she has to 
satisfy, by reiterated visits, the exacting spirit of decorum, behind a counter, of the 

* The marriage ceremony, in France, is performed before the mayor. 



118 THE MIDWIFE. 

purse-proud battling for his fancied dignity. There are patients who will summon 
her twenty times for each infant they present to the world. Let her but become the 
fashion, though it be never so little, and she will no longer have a moment to call 
her own. What a hurry the babies are all in then, to get a glimpse of the light ! 
She was going to sit down to dinner, — she is called off to visit the fat wife of some 
shopkeeper; luckily she has made her bargain beforehand, and this is "■ my gossip's" 
fifteenth adventure of the sort. 

Now all this is more or less common-place, yet all this is fact, and composes the 
most interesting scenes of private life. Many children attach great importance to 
being born. Men of genius may pass through the hands of a Midwife, while she 
knows nothing of the matter : her profession is a lottery. 

All is not done, however, when she has proceeded to the first cares demanded by 
her patient. Once assured of the infant's existence, it is part of her business to fore- 
tell its future fate, — her vaticinations regulated, of course, by the sex of their subject. 
She must be prepared to judge medically of what drink he is first to swallow : one 
might compose verses on this subject ; there are midwives who have written poems 
on it. 

The Midwife is a good specimen for those persons of her sex who dream of 
" the freedom of women." Would it be an abuse of our privileges to say 
half a word here of the stupid hypotheses lately set forth as to the rights of 
woman ? The experience of ages, and her very nature, fix her in the sanctuary of 
the domestic hearth. In the bosom of her family, she is a queen ; when a mother, 
she has a right to our adoration ; but remove her from this centre of her affections 
and of ours, — from this dear and sacred circle of private life, and you put her alto- 
gether out of her place, — you assign her a destiny wholly foreign to her true one, 
which is that of loving and cherishing, and forming the minds, and moulding the 
hearts of her children ; — you produce misery and total confusion. 

The Midwife does not desert her duties as the mother of a family. On the con- 
trary, she enters into them more completely than any other individual of her sex. 
A mother often helps others to become such. 

Viewed philosophically, what is there more noble or more elevated than the pro- 
fession of a Midwife ? But she is too close to nature to be appreciated by civiliza- 
tion. Socrates is said to have traced a line around his house, and within this he 
shut up his wife. Was this the reason why the household of Socrates was so no- 
toriously mismanaged ? Let us add, that the wisest of men was the son of a Mid- 
wife. 

There have been women who, like Lady Hester Stanhope, have been inspired 
from on high to confide their religico-poetical dreams to the burning sands of the 
desert. Others have extemporized for themselves a mission which embraces no less 
than the four quarters of the globe, and parade their fantastic peregrinations from 
one continent to another. They have had their husbands imprisoned ; they are un- 
able to bear any kind of servitude ; they have imposed on themselves the duty of 
freeing their sex from the iron yoke of whatever writeth itself Man. Others 
enter, by means of certain octavos, into the privileged class of the " celebrated" 
of all ages. Some are seen to equal, in force and enthusiasm, the contemporary 
poets, or to extemporize operas ; and in romance itself, music has been known to 



THE MIDWIFE. 119 

ally itself with poetry, under the inspiration of a single feminine muse. The sceptre 
of Comedy has dwindled to a distaff ; Memoir, heretofore the exclusive domain of 
statesmen, is become the plaything of duchesses and waiting- women, and serves as 
a prologue to divorces that have made the world ring. All this is doubtless very 
fine ; but the type of female philanthropy is to be sought elsewhere, appearing all 
the more noble because her office, so useful to a class of children who are pariahs 
from their birth, can only be worthily appreciated by a few witnesses. 

We must proclaim it loudly. The woman whom her knowledge has placed at the 
head of an establishment like the Lying-in Hospital, is a woman truly great and 
worthy of respect. This house, which it would require much graphic power to describe 
fittingly, is summed up in her; what ceaseless cares — what polished neatness. 
How many fine qualities have been required to raise her to the level of all that this 
office demands ; what strength of mind to prevent herself from becoming a mere 
creature of habit, of routine, — a mere piece of her office, as so frequently happens 
to lawyers, physicians, and consummate diplomatists. The order of the house is 
admirable ; the incessant charity that maintains it, is still more extraordinary. It is 
not in any station beneath the richest of the trading classes, that you need expect 
to find the luxury and medical refinement visible in the meanest hall of the Foundling 
Hospital. There is nothing more extravagantly contrasted, more entirely inconsistent, 
than the first moments of those especial victims to the poverty that decimates the 
poorer classes of the Parisian population — of Foundlings, considered with reference 
to the lives and habits of their probable parents, and to their own future lot, sup- 
posing a Future reserved to them. Proceeding from whatever hand, the foundlings 
are received into an asylum wherein everything is well ordered for taking care 
of them. Delivered afterwards to a hireling peasant woman, at the rate of three- 
halfpence a day, few survive the murderous regimen they are subjected to ; they die 
in the hands of the nurses — it is an unfailing consequence ! But why do they die in 
such numbers, at least in the hospital, where they are so well cared for ? Good 
heavens ! who shall say ? According to statistical calculations, a foundling, who 
arrives at the condition of a married man, is an exception infinitely rare — hardly one 
in ten thousand, — and the state expends millions to arrive at this funereal result. 

Honest philanthropists, always disposed to apply a remedy to every evil, 
what does it matter to you though there should be foundlings by myriads, provided 
they be well treated, or appear to be so. Well, the question is resolved, they are 
not well treated, or if they be, it is to no purpose : those who escape the mortality 
go to people the Houses of Correction ; they perpetuate poverty and shame both 
within the pale of society and without. There is but one remedy for this evil — it is 
that of suppressing it ; it is to permit the scarcely -formed ties of blood to strengthen 
themselves by ameliorating the lot of the indigent classes, whence proceed the ma- 
jority of the foundlings, for with the exception we have nothing to do. One fact is 
fully established : it is, that a child found, is, in the present day, a child lost ; this 
play on the word, cruelly serious, we retain, for there was no mode of avoiding it. 

Honour once again to the Midwife, who, without any of the flattering compen- 
sations with which the world surrounds those who devote themselves to many other 
careers, accomplishes some good work every day of her life, some work highly useful 
and made up of many details, which render her respectable in the eyes of all ! 



120 



THE MIDWIFE. 



The common Midwife is altogether eclipsed and put out of consideration, when 
one has seen what constitutes the part performed by her who is at the head of the 
Lying-in Hospital. 

Arrived at the dignity of Professor, she is hand-in-hand with the Medical 
Eminences of her day : her auditory is composed of women only, but she is none 
the less placed on the apex of Science ; her name is an authority, — she has an 
Editor, — yes ! and a scientific Editor, too ! It is notorious that the Faculty has 
lately refused a diploma to a woman who was in every way worthy of the distinc- 
tion : the learned body was afraid perhaps of rivalry, and the influence of so noble 
an example on the destinies of Medicine. This fact seems ridiculous : it is merely 
— to use the common expression — " an imitation of the Greeks." The Areopagus, 
having seen that medical acquirements were spreading too extensively among 
women, proscribed the profession of Midwifery,- but the prejudice in favour of 
midwives was so deeply rooted among the ladies of Athens, that they preferred 
death to being attended by men. The Athenian Agnodice carried the love of her 
art so far as to disguise herself, coming to the aid of her own sex in the dress of the 
other. Convicted of practising her profession in spite of the decree, she was con- 
demned to death, and obtained her pardon only at the prayer of the most distin- 
guished ladies of Athens. The Tribunal would have done better, perhaps, if, in the 
matter of accouchements, it had declared itself incompetent of judging. 

It is permitted to the Midwife to act as Professor in her particular walk : she 
may even send pupils into the provinces ; and those who have practised under her 
do not forget to name it on their signs. 

The office of the " sage-femme" is not confined, as we have seen, to the usual 
cares demanded by her patient. She is a votary- general of the goddess Hygeia ; 
and when you name a midwife, you name the Physician of ladies for every malady, 
real or supposed. When an infant has been brought into existence, — when it is 
well awakened to life, the Midwife is still not at the end of her trials : she is 
required to dress him, — to bedeck, and bedizen, and set him off gaily. Luckily, she 
has close to her hand all the vestments of him who, according to Fitche, is king of 
the creation ; the little velvet cap adorned with ribbons, the cambric shirts, the fine 
embroidery ; all this passes through the hands of the Midwife ; she would be in des- 
pair if any other than herself should instal the newly-born. Thus adjusted and 
adonized like one of Waltein's " Loves," she presents him to the family, which is 
forced to admit that, after the little Cupid himself, the most admirable thing in the 
world is the Midwife. 



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HOBTICULTOBIST. 




THE HORTICULTURIST. 



BY ALPHONSE KMtR. 




zX^ ERTAIN tastes brighten and fill up so completely a 
• man's existence, that we can easily understand how 
all feel the want of a hobby to indulge according to 
their fancy. 

Thus, sometimes we see very superior men devote 
their lives to a few flowers, or a few insects, and not 
uncommonly to a single flower, or a single insect : an 
admirable instinct, or perhaps a wise philosophy, has 
taught them to present the least possible target to the 
shafts of fortune, contenting themselves with a humble lot, and enjoying a simple 
happiness apart from the busy world. 

The intensity and violence of a passion are not to be measured by its object. The 
Horticulturists, who, like the bees, live among the flowers, have also, like them, a 
dangerous sting. The softer passions protect themselves by an outward ferocity, 
like rare plantations surrounded by briars and thistles, to preserve them from the 
encroachments of cattle. 

This reminds us how we became acquainted with the naturally bad disposition 
of sheep, which we had always regarded as emblems of gentleness and kindness. 
" Sir," said a shepherd to us, as we walked side by side along the road to Epernay, 
" there is no animal so wicked as the sheep : only look at mine ; they care no more 
for the pasture of that inclosed field than for this on the common, where they may 
range at will, and yet there they are in the field. They must do it to have me 

R 



122 THE HORTICULTURIST. 

taken up for trespassing, and fined. Brrr — brrr — seize him there, Medor — brrr — . 
It is the black one yonder that is teazing my dog : it takes a delight in irritating 
him. The malicious animal is trying to provoke the dog to worry him, knowing 
that when a dog kills a sheep, it is the poor shepherd who pays. Here, boy. — 
Medor ! Medor ! — Down, sir, down. — Behind — fall back." 

A discussion once arose, in the presence of the author of this sketch, concerning 
a stock, asserted to be blue, of which the blossoms were a most beautiful yellow ; 
and the writer's life was actually put in jeopardy by his asking of what use it could 
possibly be to have blue stocks to produce yellow flowers. 

It will be remembered with what enthusiasm tulips were cultivated all over 
Europe, particularly in France and in Holland, about thirty years ago. One root, 
the Semper Augustus, was sold for 12,000 francs. Another, the Yellow Crown, for 
1,123 francs, and a carriage and two bay horses. A third, not very fine, the Vice- 
roy, fetched no less than the following articles in exchange : — Four tons of wheat, 
eight of rye, four oxen, eight pigs, twelve sheep, two casks of wine, four barrels of 
beer, two firkins of butter, a thousand pounds' weight of cheese, a bed, bedstead, 
and bedding, a chest of clothes, and a silver goblet. 

At that time, it was quite usual to see in the newspapers such a paragraph as the 
following, under the head of foreign news : — " Amsterdam. — The Admiral Lief hers 
is flowering beautifully at M. Berghem's." 

But to return to our story. Horticulturists took it into their heads one fine day, 
that yellow tulips were no longer beautiful, and were unworthy the admiration they 
had hitherto received; that the only tulips worth looking at, or cultivating, were those 
with white grounds. Henceforth, yellow tulips were to be banished, and their seeds 
scattered to the winds. Amateurs were not, however, undivided on the question. 
Letters, pamphlets, songs, and even thick quartos, were written on the subject. 
The yellow-tulip party were called obstinate, prejudiced, illiterate, enemies to all 
improvement, and Jesuits ; while the partisans of white tulips were pronounced to 
be innovators, revolutionists, democrats, and sans-culottes. Friends quarrelled, 
husbands and wives separated, and families were disunited. 

As M. Miiller was one evening playing at dominoes with one of his oldest 
friends, tulips chanced to be mentioned. M. Miiller was a yellow tulipist, while his 
friend sided with the reformed partisans of the white ones. The celebrated com- 
poser, Mehul, himself a distinguished amateur, had just gone over to the white 
party. Being both well-bred men, M. Miiller and his friend spoke with the greatest 
moderation, and appeared to avoid, with extreme care, the most distant approach to 
a dispute. 

" Nature," said M. Miiller, " as she has made nothing in vain, so has she pro- 
duced nothing out of place. There is some beauty in every one of her productions. 
Why should amateurs rigidly exclude from their gardens certain flowers ? There 
are, undoubtedly, some white tulips that I would willingly admit into my collection, 
were my garden large enough." 

" I, also," replied his friend, not wishing to be behind in politeness and conces- 
sions, "lam ready to allow that the Erymanthe, all yellow as it is, is a very pre- 
sentable flower." 



THE HORTICULTURIST. 123 

" I do not condemn the Unique de Delphes, white as it is," said M. Miiller. 

"But it is not very white," observed the friend: "it keeps, for three or four 
days, the yellow tint that distinguishes it when its petals first open, and for this 
reason we do not esteem it much." 

" Yet it is the one of all your collection that I should prefer." 

The two friends were on these excellent terms when Madame Miiller left them to 
make tea. It would be difficult to ascertain by what imperceptible transitions the 
discussion warmed into a serious quarrel, until insults were exchanged. It is cer- 
tain, that when Madame Miiller returned to the room, the table was overturned, the 
dominoes scattered over the carpet, while M. Miiller and his friend, having seized 
each other by the hair, were engaged in a desperate struggle. 

It will be readily imagined with what feelings of shame the two antagonists were 
overwhelmed, after their anger had a little cooled. On the morrow, M. Miiller 
wrote the following note to his friend : — 

"lama brute, really worse than a bear. Pray receive my apologies, and for the 
sake of our old friendship let us forget this foolish affair. My wife begs of you to 
come and dine with us to-day. — There will be a favourite dish of yours. 

" Your friend, 

" Muller. 
"P.S. — Will you oblige me, my dear friend, by putting aside for me a few of 
your beautiful white tulips ? I have reserved for them one of my best beds. I am 
particularly anxious for the Palamede and the Agate Roy ale." 

Shortly after despatching the above, he received the following answer : — 

" I shall be with you a quarter before five. You will permit me, my dear friend, 
to introduce to you a horticulturist who desires to see your magnificent tulips, espe- 
cially your Tenebreuse, your Julvecourt, and your delicate Lisa." 

Out of compliment to his friend, M. Muller expressed his admiration for the 
whitest amongst the white tulips, while his friend was no less warm in his praise of 
the yellow specimens. However, this sudden change could only proceed from 
generous feeling between the two friends. M. Walter's concession passed away 
with the sentiment and impulse of the first moment ; M. Miiller's did not long sur- 
vive his momentary enthusiasm. The poor white tulips were not half so well 
tended and cared for as the yellow. The second year, M. Muller thought they 
encumbered his garden ; the third, they were placed near a waterspout, where they 
flowered badly; and M. Muller, after showing his visitors his fine collection of yellow 
tulips, in all their brilliancy and splendour of full bloom, would say, " These are the 
only samples of white tulips we keep : they were given to me by my friend Walter, 
and I prize them highly for his sake." And when, ten minutes afterwards, he 
added, " I am at a loss to understand why horticulturists cultivate white tulips," 
no wonder that M. Midler's visitors agreed with him. 

There were, in the reign of Louis XIV., only four sorts of roses known. At the 



124 



THE HORTICULTURIST. 



present day, the reasonable horticulturists — those who are not so blinded by their 
love of new discoveries as to give five or six different names to the same plant — 
reckon forty different species, and more than eighteen hundred varieties. 

Certain amateurs, led astray by the ambition of being the exclusive possessors of 
a particular variety, seek for defects in roses with as much eagerness as others 
would look for beauties. If a rose be but rare, that is beauty sufficient ; and it is 
prized, on that account, more than those rich in form, colour, or perfume. Rose- 
fanciers have been seeking, these last fifty years, for a green, blue, or black rose, 
and for the double- capuchin rose. 

Madame de Grenlis, who pretends to have originated the moss-rose, gives, in one 
of her works, a receipt to procure a green and a black rose ; the process, which is 
exceedingly simple, is only to graft a rose on a cassia or a holly tree. We have 
tried on both ; the holly produced its green and prickly leaves, and the cassia bore 
its accustomed fruit. 

Every year, towards the end of May, a never-failing report goes the round of the 
newspapers that the double-capuchin rose is at last discovered. We have journeyed 
far and wide to see it, but till now we have neither found it double nor capuchin. 
To produce the blue rose, horticulturists have filled every nook of their gardens 
with every description of blue flower, in the vain hope that the bees, by carrying 
the pollen from their stamina to a rose-tree, might give birth to the wished-for 
flower. We have on this subject an idea of our own, which we shall put in practice 
some one of these days. — The roses designated by the blackest names, such as the 
" Negress," the " Ourika," &c, are all violet. 

Amateurs are constantly on the watch to observe the most minute differences. 
One rose is remarkable for its stem, another for its thorns. This is precious on 
account of its total want of beauty ; that is admired in consequence of its having 

no perfume ; and another would not be nearly 
so valuable, did it not possess an odour peculi- 
arly disagreeable. In fact, the more extraordi- 
nary they are, and the farther removed from 
what all the world can have, the more highly 
they are prized. 

Happy the man who could possess a rose 
which would become a vine, that he might 
make wine from his roses ! We have seen 
a rose-bush which the happy possessor tri- 
umphantly assured us had not flowered for 
five years. Lucky man ! but still more lucky 
would he be if next year it would bear no 
leaves ! 

A horticulturist of no mean note was the 
curate of Palaiseau, a small village in the depart- 
ment of Seine-et-Oise, where our friend Victor 
Bohain had a rose-tree as high as a plum-tree, which unfortunately died in the 
winter of 1838. 




THE HORTICULTURIST. 125 

The curate of Palaiseau lived to the age of eighty-two. He died in the beginning 
of spring, just at the time of the year when he would have enjoyed, for the sixtieth 
time, the precious collection of flowers that it had been the occupation of his life to 
form. 

A few years ago, this venerable priest had a great curiosity to see a collection 
belonging to an English gentleman. 

This collection was of itself a real " rosa mystica," as say the litanies. The 
Englishman's garden was a harem, surrounded by lofty walls, inside which no one 
had ever been admitted, on any pretext whatever. Our English amateur was 
furiously jealous of his roses. For him alone his flowers were to bloom in all 
their varied richness of colour and exquisite perfume. Some German author has 
said that the happy are difficult of access ; and if this be true, the Englishman 
might have been the happiest of mortals : no one had even seen his roses, and he 
was even jealous of the breeze that wafted their fragrant odours beyond the pre- 
cincts of his garden. To complete the rigours of his harem, he often thought of 
having for guardians of his roses (to him real odalisques) a guard of eunuchs, who, 
if not blind, should at least have lost the sense of smelling. 

However, one night our good curate set out, and drove five long leagues in a 
carriage without springs. He was at this time nearly eighty years of age; he 
arrived before daylight, and applied to the gardener ; to tell the whole truth, the 
good priest is accused of having employed bribery to obtain an entrance into the 
mysterious retreat. 

The gardener was not incorruptible. As the first speck of dawn appeared in the 
east, he softly opened the garden-door with well-oiled key to admit the curate, who 
was breathless with impatience. They moved silently and slowly from the door, it 
being still so early that nothing could be distinguished ; the curate was beginning 
to inhale the fragrant air, embalmed by the Englishman's roses, when suddenly a 
voice was heard from an open window of the mansion : — 

"William! William! — Do you hear? Show that gentleman out of the 
garden." 

From this there was no appeal. The poor curate could only return to his car- 
riage, and drive home, after journeying ten leagues over an execrable road, and to no 
purpose. The only consolation be received was from a neighbour, who maintained 
that the Englishman only kept his garden so sacred from visitors because he had not 
a single flower in it. 

Amateurs, generally speaking, do not like to admit visitors indiscriminately into 
their gardens : they have a particular horror of persons designated as pickers and 
stealers. Neither bribery nor corruption, scaling walls nor false keys, — in short, 
nothing will deter certain amateurs from possessing themselves of a shoot or a seed 
of a flower that they have not. 

In 1828, the Duchess de Berri obtained from the seed-plots of roses that were 
planted every year at Rosni, twelve flowers that appeared to her remarkably beau- 
tiful ; but as it was still more desirable to have unique, or at least very rare, roses, 
she commissioned Madame de Larochejacquelin to show them and ask the opinion of 
a celebrated florist. After having examined them a few minutes, the florist decided 



126 THE HORTICULTURIST. 

that there were amongst them three unknown varieties : but he gave the preference 
to one over the two others, and it was named the Hybride de Rosni. 

About two years after, in May or June 1830, the last time the Duchess de Berri 
was destined to see her roses in bloom, she thought that, having enjoyed, during 
two years, the possession of the Hybrides de Rosni, she might allow the pleasure to 
be shared by others, and accordingly again commissioned Madame de Laroche- 
jacquelein to present a slip in her name to the eminent florist she had consulted on 
the former occasion. 

Madame de Larochejacquelein found the horticulturist in his garden, reading 
under the shade of two beautiful rose-trees, laden with magnificent flowers ; he 
received the offer with expressions of gratitude proportionate to the honour and 
attention ; but they arrived too late. The florist had taken care, during the short 
time that the roses had been in his possession, two years before, to cut two shoots 
from the most beautiful variety ; he had grafted them with the most perfect suc- 
cess, and he received the duchess's message under the shade of those very trees, which 
were incomparably fairer than any to be seen at Rosni. 

Most cultivators of flowers indulge their taste more from vanity than love, more 
to show them than to see them. With very few exceptions, horticulturists do not 
love flowers for their own sakes. Some will plant in the pebbles a dahlia (the 
White-edged Incomparable) , to insure its being party-coloured ; others will strip all 
the leaves from a camelia. In France, flowers have a great deal to do with politics. 
On the return of the elder branch of the Bourbons, M. P * * * guillotined all the 
imperials in his garden. Violets, exiled by Louis XVIII. , have since been recalled. 
M. de Castres, Commandant of the Palace of the Tuileries, banished the carnation. 
For some years after the revolution of July, lilies disappeared from all the royal 
gardens. We generally respect all passions and all means of happiness ; but we do 
not believe in the passion of the Horticulturist : it is not a real passion. 





THE COURT OF ASSIZE.* 



BY CORMENIN. 




have buzzed long enough about the ears of statesmen 
and of kings ; now be it mine to wheel my flight to- 
wards the Bench, and rouse the Judges with my sting. 
What ! after having passed at the edge of the sword 
every contortion of language in the Speech from the 
I Throne — after having bantered the sublime Philippics 
of our deputies — after having laid hands on the address 
of the Speaker — after having heard our preachers 
launch their pulpit- thunders at the mighty of this 
world, and blow upon the gilded dust of their vices — shall the Bench — the Bench 
alone be inaccessible to the scourge of the pamphleteer ? 

Nay, that would be neither just nor desirable — even for those who sit there. 

* In none of these Sketches has the Editor found it more difficult to render the French original 
in language comprehensible to the mass of English readers, than in the present. The subject, in- 
deed, goes beyond the mere manners of France ; it involves one of her most important and most 
peculiar institutions — that for the administration of criminal justice. The following lines may 
serve to give a general notion of the features of the French system : — 

The preliminary inquiry, which is performed in England publicly by the coroner with a jury, or 
by the committing magistrates, is conducted in France secretly, by the Juge d' Instruction. The 
grand jury does not exist in France, but every accusation of crime is submitted, in the first place, 
to a body called the "Chambre du Conseil du Tribunal de Premiere Instance," which may annul it 
by a decision of " non Men" equivalent to the finding " no true bill." If, however, it passes this 
ordeal, it is referred to the " Chambre d' Accusation," which transmits it (if it think fit) to the 
Assizes by an " arret de renvoi." There are twenty-seven Cours Royales in France, each of which 
furnishes a president (in rotation) to hold the Courts of Assize for the trial of criminals. The pro- 



128 THE COURT OF ASSIZE. 

If some Corneille were to present another Agesilaus on the stage, the public 
would exclaim, " Solve senescentem — He dotes, let him go !" 

If our melodious Rossini were to assail our ears with discords, the public would 
respond by an accompaniment of Jew's harps. 

If the sylph of the opera, the divine Taglioni, instead of fluttering in the air, were 
to hobble and stumble over the stage, the public would have the impudence to pelt 
her with orange-peel. 

If the marquises and viscounts of our inimitable Moliere were to pass their time 
in making ducks and drakes in the town-ditches, the pit would laugh all such 
marquises and viscounts out of countenance for ever. 

We hiss kings, we hiss geniuses, we hiss the great, the eloquent, and our 
dancing-girls ; and I don't see why we should not hiss whatever can be hissed at — 
though it sit on the woolsack. 

I say nothing of the charges of the Court to the jury — the offspring of a turgid 
rhetoric, which good taste and good sense would fain suppress. I have asserted 
more than once — and I stick to my text — beyond the gates of our capital, nobody 
knows how to wield the pen ! There are provincial speakers, — there are no pro- 
vincial writers — not one at the present day, not one among thirty- two millions. If 
any such there be, where is the meteor ? Where is he ? Let him shoot up to 
sight within the horizon ! 

The art of the pen — the sublime art of letters, requires the sun of Paris, — the sun 
of the metropolis, to unfold the bud and to mature the flower. It signifies but little, 
indeed, that the Bench of France should be somewhat illiterate, provided it be 
esteemed for its learning, its virtues, its integrity, and its disinterestedness ; and in 
these respects the Bench of France is the most estimable in Europe. 

But there is no light without a shade, no rule without an exception ; our eulogy 
may be the rule, but the charge must be the exception, lest such charges should 
grow into the rule. 



The magistracy of France is divided into two classes, that of the Bar and that 

secution is always conducted by a procureur-general, avocat-general, or their deputies. These 
functionaries form an official legal class, distinct from the bar and from the bench. They are 
termed gens du parquet, or the junior grade of the judicial magistracy. They practise exclusively 
as the salaried officers of the crown, and they are intimately connected, by their position and their 
future prospects, with the superior members of the Cour Royale, who preside in the court. The 
English reader will hardly know whether most to wonder at a Bar so led, or a Bench so edu- 
cated. The distinguished author of this paper has forcibly pointed out the defects of the one and 
of the other. (See, for further details of Criminal Justice in France, the British and Foreign 
Review, vol. ii. p. 105.) 



THE COURT OF ASSIZE. 129 

of the Bench : the former is temporary, the latter permanent ; the former stands, 
the latter sits ; the former declaims, the latter judges ; the one prosecutes, the 
other condemns. 

I know of no finer part in the drama of our Assizes than that of accuser-general, 
if he maintain the calmness and the gravity of the public which he represents. The 
public acts not for vengeance, but in self-defence ; it seeks to detect, not to persecute 
the criminal ; and when convicted he is handed over to the executive officers of the 
law. The only eloquence the public approves is that of Truth ; the only force to be 
employed in the public service is that of Justice. When a man has been appre- 
hended, and is dragged between two soldiers to sit in a dock in front of the twelve 
citizens who are to try him — of the Court which is to interrogate him— of the 
counsel for the Crown who is to arraign him, and of the curious public searching 
his looks — that man, though he should have worn a king's robe and borne a king's 
sceptre — is then nothing more than an object of compassion. His fortune, his 
freedom, his life, his honour, dearer than his life, are in your hands. — Gentlemen of 
the Bench and of the Bar, what are your emotions ? 

Little do they understand their office and their calling, who debase the magistrate 
in the man, the actor, the partizan. They do not arraign the prisoner — they plead, 
they bawl, they rave, they rage with invective ; now they arrange the folds of their 
black drapery in studied folds, to accuse with elegance, as the gladiators of Rome 
studied the attitude in which they should gracefully await the death-stroke : now 
they mimic the gesture and the voice of a tragedy-king, and fancy they are making 
an effect when they are only making a noise. 

Erect at the bar, with a countenance flaming with animation, they command the 
jury, seated at their feet ; they perplex them with gesticulation — they stun them 
with vociferation. I have seen jurors shut their eyes and stop their ears at the 
approach of these storms of rhetoric — of these deafening clamours. Pity, oh ! pity 
for the jury, if not for the prisoners ! 

The jury did not come into court to witness the scenes of an imaginary drama. 
When they go to the play it is quite another thing : there they go to take pleasure 
in the emotions of the stage. They go to be terrified ; they go to be moved. They 
take with them a handkerchief, to bring it back soaked with tears ; and they know 
all the time the prisoners and tyrants of melodrama, who worry their prosy speeches 
for effect, are, in all other respects, a worthy set of fellows ; and that the martyrs 
who are massacred in the side-scenes remain in excellent health notwithstanding, 
and very willingly resume with their assassins the game at dominos in the coffee- 
room down stairs, which was interrupted by the rising of the curtain. After all, if 
the actor play amiss, the spectators may hiss him, without prejudice to the author. 
But when Reality takes the place of Fiction, — when these same spectators sit as 
jurymen in court, — when it is their verdict which is to kill or to acquit, their thoughts 
assume a graver colour. They bid the giddy fancies, which queen it in the brain, 
keep out. They have no ears but for the calmer voice of reason, no eyes but 
for the fact, no thought but for the thoughts of the prisoner : they question his 
every feature ; they anxiously . scrutinize his answers — his contradictions — his 
ejaculations — his emotions — his smiles — his pale countenance — his chill shudder. 



130 THE COURT OF ASSIZE. 

There they sit in the presence of God, of man, and of that sacred Truth which they 
would fain lay hold on — which they search, they demand, they implore. Waken 
them not from so holy a meditation — the rhetoric of all your orators is not worth 
a good man's conscience. 

No, they mistake their calling, who as counsel for the Crown are for ever straining 
their sinews and their jaws, to stilt up a heinous crime on the shoulders of a trifling 
misdemeanour. 

They mistake their calling who dress up the common truisms of morality in the 
jingle of poetic rhodomontade, and who would scare the public, if public vengeance 
does not fall on the veriest trifle. 

They mistake their calling w r ho apostrophize the prisoner, inveigh against his 
counsel, and browbeat his witnesses. 

They mistake their calling who do not frankly abandon the prosecution, when 
the evidence has brought out the innocence of the accused, but who persist in their 
demand of punishment — lessened by one degree. 

They mistake their calling who stimulate and excite the jury, the Court, and the 
audience by their impassioned metaphors, their frantic appeals to political sym- 
pathies, their rolling eyes and threatening gestures — to earn the wretched satis- 
faction of having it said, " How powerfully he has spoken ! How eloquent he has 
been !" 

I am not Keeper of the Seals, and surely I have no wish to hold that office ; but if 
I were, I would remove this or that public accuser for having been eloquent 
out of place ; and I would imitate the generosity of those Romans who broke their 
officers for having killed an enemy in single combat, out of the ranks. Every thing 
has its place — eloquence as well as courage — as well as virtue. 

Here you will find a public prosecutor who causes the acquittal of a criminal by 
his exaggeration of the crime. 

There you will meet with another who, in a political trial, does more harm to the 
government by the bursts of his intemperate zeal, than the most violent outrages of 
the libel he would repress. 

The rule ought to be (and the exceptions should be rare) that no one should act 
as counsel for the crown under thirty-six years of age. For, if the public prosecutors 
are the organs of the public, they cannot possess or use too much moderation, 
dignity, experience, learning, or good taste. As no one has a right to cut short an 
attorney- general in the midst of his harangue, he ought to know how to guide him- 
self. If there be a lack of magistrates, spare not, stint not, — double their salaries : 
spare not, stint not, and recollect that this is not a question of money, but a question 
involving the liberty, the honour, the life of your fellow- citizens. 

The duties of that higher branch of the magistracy which occupies the bench are 
not less numerous than those of the lower branch, which pleads at the bar. I 
know of no office more solemn, more sacred, or more august, than that of the chief 
Judge of the Assize. The assemblage of his powers represents the triple sway of 
might, religion, and justice. He unites the triple authority of the King, the Priest, 
and the Judge. How high an opinion ought a magistrate placed in so eminent a 
situation — perhaps the first in society — to have of himself, that is to say, of his 



THE COURT OF ASSIZE. 131 

proper duties, in order to discharge them worthily. "With what sagacity must he 
connect the thread of evidence, broken a hundred times by the tortuous skill of the 
advocate. To bring out truth from the contradictions of the witnesses ; to com- 
pare the oral with the written evidence ; to combine the analogous points of the 
case; to cut short doubts ; to urge the questions ; to lay hold of every circumstance, 
every fact, every letter, every admission, every exclamation, every word, every 
gesture, every look, every tone of voice which may give a clue to the truth ; ta^ 
interrogate the prisoner with gentle firmness; to exhort him to confession and 
repentance ; to raise his fainting spirits ; to warn him when he is committing himself ; 
to direct him when he proceeds ; to restrain the counsel for the crown and for the 
prisoner within the bounds of propriety, without checking their rightful liberty ; to 
explain to the jury the points of law ; to give the witnesses full time to reflect, and 
to give their answers clearly ; to keep a respectful silence in the court : — these are 
the manifold duties of the President of a Court. Happy is he who can understand 
them, — who can discharge them ! 

But the great stumbling-block of the Judge is the summing-up of the evidence. 
To sum up, is to give a clear account of the facts ; to go over the evidence on either 
side ; to examine what has been said in support of the charge, and in behalf of the 
prisoner, and nothing but what has been said ; and to place before the jury, with 
logical simplicity, the questions to which tbeir verdict is to be the answer. All 
summings-up ought to be precise, firm, full, impartial, and short. 



But there are judges who loll in their chairs, as if they were taking their ease ; 
there are judges who sketch pen- caricatures of the people in court, who twine their 
fingers through their curls, who pass all the pretty women in court in review with 
their eye-glass, who intimidate the prisoner by the harsh and imperious brevity of 
their questions, who affront and put out the witnesses, bully the counsel, and pro- 
voke the jury. Some are ridiculous, and others impertinent ; but there are some 
who are worse than either, — those who give way to all their passions as men or as 
partisans. They rush into the strife of politics — their weapons in their hand — their 
finger on the trigger ; they open upon the jury all the batteries of the accusation ; 
they throw into the shade the defence ; they lump the facts of the case together, 
instead of clearing them up ; they expatiate upon times, and places, and persons, 
and characters, and opinions, wholly foreign to the cause ; they want to court the 
government, or a coterie, or a personage; they hint that what the jury still consider 



132 THE COURT OF ASSIZE. 

as a mere charge, is in their eyes a convicted crime ; they point out its obvious 
commission, and its imminent danger ; they quibble with law, and flourish with 
rhetoric; they supply fresh arguments, which they invent, to those which the public 
accuser has left untouched, and excuse themselves by saying such is the language 
of the indictment, though the indictment says nothing of the sort, and they add a 
falsehood to their shame. 

Fancy the position of a prisoner who has been refreshed, who has been restored 
by the courageous and persuasive language of his counsel, only to be felled to the 
earth by the terrible weight of the Judge's charge. The jury too !— the jury might 
be upon their guard against the vehemency of an accuser, who was only doing his 
daily work, and of the counsel for the prisoner, because theirs was avowedly par- 
tial language ; but what protection is there against the hand that holds the impartial 
beam of justice ? — against the Judge, who ought simply to report upon the cause, 
without letting his own opinion transpire, — without disclosing the man under the 
robe of the magistrate ? 

The jury have no vast and practised powers of memory to retain, to compare, to 
arrange, and to judge the conflicting arguments bandied from side to side. What 
with the excitement of their feelings, and the fatigue of their duties, they yield, as 
all plain men do, to the last impression they have received. If that last impression 
be given under the form of a reiterated accusation, how heavy a weight must lie upon 
the conscience of that jury! — how great a peril on the head of that prisoner! 
I shudder to think that, in the country more especially, a rustic jury — a jury of 
simple, illiterate men — a dreadful jury — may allow the artifice or the passion of the 
summing-up of the Judge to determine of itself — of itself alone — a sentence of death. 
The law provides that the prisoner, whose innocence is still presumed by a humane 
fiction, should have the last word. Is it not, then, an open violation of humanity 
and of right, if the Judge, instead of summing up the evidence, reiterate the thunders 
of the accusation ? Is the prisoner to have two opponents instead of one, — first the 
counsel for the Crown, afterwards the Judge upon the Bench ? If he raises his sup- 
plicating looks to the Court, — if he takes refuge in the sanctuary of justice, — is he 
to meet a weapon turned against his breast, instead of a shield to cover it ? If he 
venture to make a timid observation, he irritates the very person who is to apply 
the sentence, in the event of his conviction. If his counsel protest, he is set down 
by the Court. If the papers publish the proceedings of the Judge, they are prose- 
cuted, and tried without a jury, for false reporting.* 

What remedy is there for all this ? — To appeal ; but is there any legal ground 
for reversing the sentence ? Can you prove to the Court of Cassation that the 
Judge summed up with gross partiality ? What written evidence can you produce 
in that court, where oral evidence is not received ? Would a Court of Assize admit 
upon the record a protest against the conduct of its own chief officer ? Perhaps 
there would be no great harm in suppressing the Judge's charge altogether, in petty 
matters, or in trials connected with politics or the press ; and it is in these, it must 

* The jury, in France, does not sit upon the causes brought before the Police Correcticnnelle, 
or lesser criminal courts. 



THE COURT OF ASSIZE. 133 

be confessed, that the summing up in the mouth of a prejudiced magistrate most 
frequently assumes the tone of the indictment. But if there are several prisoners, 
numerous accomplices, and combined offences, differing in degree ; if the crime itself 
is of an obscure and complicated nature, if the evidence is contradictory, if the 
questions or counts are various and conflicting, if the trial has lasted several days, 
and the attention of the jury is already lost or exhausted, what can be done without 
a summing-up ? Without it, in such a case, it would be impossible to see to the 
bottom of the matter ; and the life and honour of the prisoners might as well be 
staked on the cast of a dice-box. 

What means then can be devised to compel those judges to sum up with impar- 
tiality, whom the provisions of the law, and the more imperious voice of duty, do 
not constrain ? The plan is a simple one. The trial is public, and the summing-up 
is an important part of the trial ; the short-hand writer's notes are the most com- 
plete and accurate means of publicity ; the short- hand writer ought to take down 
and publish all that falls from the Judge, and the public will then be able to judge 
him. 

Nor should the Keeper of the Seals neglect to issue instructions upon instructions 
to repress an abuse which is breaking out on all sides, though its shocking conse- 
quences ought long ago to have been checked. 

The president of a Court of Assize has not only to conduct the trial, but likewise 
to exercise a supreme authority in the court ; and in those courts the public is un- 
like any other public. A few workmen out of work, a few loose women, haunters 
of taverns and hells, thieves at the commencement or the close of their career, men 
escaped from the galleys, the lazy, the good-for-nothing, and the good-for-nothing- 
else, squeeze their way to the foot of the staircase which leads into court. No sooner 
is it opened than they rush in : they press each other, they elbow, they jostle, they 
stand on tiptoes, and look from a distance like a black living mass, which sends 




forth rude exclamations, stifled cries, coarse jokes, and a brutal hubbub of offended 
decency, angry oaths, and strange slang. The swindler or the assassin comes there 
to learn how a witness may be thrown out, how a question may be evaded, how an 
alibi may be invented, how a fact may be distorted, and how the criminal code may 
be interpreted. Another man comes in there from mere curiosity, and goes out 
with the temptation of crime in his heart, — a fruitful though a tainted seed. The 
mania of imitation drives more people into crime than all the machinery of the law, 
and the terrors of punishment, can deter from it. The Court of Assize is a detest- 
able school of immorality. 



134 THE COURT OF ASSIZE. 

Such is the back-ground of the auditory. The people — say rather the populace 
— stand in the pit ; but ladies— ladies dressed out in their flounces, and feathers, 
and flowers, anxious to see and be seen — occupy the first places, the stalls of that 
dreadful theatre ! 

Women of the world are not cruel, but they are the most curious creatures in the 
universe : they live on emotions ; they die of emotions every five minutes ; they 
have lovers for their verses, and verses for their lovers ; they must, forsooth, suffer 
to enjoy, and enjoy to suffer. Your woman of the world dreads nothing so much 
as regular hours, a sleepy existence, and the genial indolence of the boudoir and the 
easy chair. She is for ever on the wing from noon to night, at the theatre, at the 
chambers, at church, in the park, at balls, — she is always in search of whatever 
may excite, or amuse, or shake, or convulse, or upset her wretched body or her 
wretched soul. Everything she touches multiplies her existence. She rushes, with 
all her passion and all her spirit, into every sensation that chances to cross her, — 
obstacles are nothing to her : she has made up her mind to see a thing, and she 
will see it. She will write ten three-cornered notes, on pink paper, to the Judge, 
to obtain the favour of an admission and a seat — a chair — nay, a stool— at the trial. 
At daybreak, she leaves her soft and warm bed to wait at the door of the court : 
there she stands, with a keen north-easter in her teeth, and her feet in the mud ; 
she shivers all over ; the door opens ; she darts on, she presses forward, she crowds, 
she pushes, and at last she gets in through the gendarmes and the police, and 
the black gowns of the bar. She hangs on the skirts of a policeman's coat, 
talks to him softly in his ear, and does not let him go till she is placed, and 
squatted at her ease, with her eye-glass at her eye, close to the prisoner and near 
the judges. 

Mark how she follows, step by step, the living drama which is going on ; mark 
how her bosom swells with emotion after emotion ! If the prisoner has a rough 
beard and haggard eyes, she looks at him with the pleasure of fear, — emotion. If 
his cheeks are ruddy, and his hair neatly curled, " Poor fellow — a smart lad," says 
she ; " what a pity !" — emotion. If the witnesses come in hanging their arms, and 
talking nonsense, she laughs in her handkerchief,- — emotion. If the prisoner sobs, 
she falls to crying from sympathy, — emotion. If somebody in court faints, she 
rushes up, cuts the lace, and offers her smelling-bottle, — another sort of emotion. 
But unless the solid pillars of the court give way, she will not give up her seat. Her 
eyes are riveted to the eyes of the prisoner ; she clings to his lips ; she feasts upon 
the ineffable terrors of a human soul. The hours fly, night is coming on, the jury 
has retired, still she waits — she waits to hear the fatal sentence, and the convict's 
sigh ; she catches the last flutter of that tattered conscience ; she listens for his 
slightest exclamation, — for his stifled groan ; she follows him with one long look 
when he is removed from the dock, till the prison doors turn upon their hinges, and 
then she falls back on her chair, absorbed, overpowered, by what she has seen. The 
keeper of the court is obliged to tell her that the court is cleared, and to show her 
the way out. She drags herself along the passages of the building ; she gets home, 
worn out, tired to death, her nerves shattered, her soul afflicted, and throws herself 
on her bed. Still she shudders; she is flushed; she turns pale with imaginary horror; 



THE COURT OF ASSIZE. 135 

she sees the dungeon, the fetters, the court, the accuser, the headsman, the guillo- 
tine — she screams with agony ! — A worthy woman ! 

What have those golden clasps, those circlets of pearl, those flowers, that finery, 
those floating plumes, to do amidst the mournful solemnities of a criminal court ? 
Is the prisoner there to play a part ? Is the dock a stage ? Who can assure me, 
that at the sight of this curious and brilliant assembly, the sufferer in his prison 
dress will not be disconcerted, that the witness will not forget what he was going to 
say, and that the jury may not be more attracted by the blushing emotion of a pretty 
woman, than by the anguish of the prisoner ? 

If I had the honour to be the president of a Court of Assize, I would admit no 
women there, except the relations of the prisoner ; and I should address all the 
others in some such language as the following : — " Ladies, sitting as well as stand- 
ing, listen to what I am going to say. Do you go home to knit stockings for your 
sons, and you to get up fine linen with your daughters ; do you take care that the 
joint is not burnt to-day ; you, that your floors are swept and smooth ; you, that 
there is oil enough in the lamps, and salt enough in the soup ; do you throw in the 
proper hues and shades into your worsted work ; you may strut the stage with the 
air of an old coquette ; you may do your scales, and you make capers. Ladies, 
retire ! Judging has nothing to do with the Graces ; and the fairer half of the 
human race are out of their place in a Court of Assize. Officer in waiting, clear 
the court." 

Such would be my orders, and I believe they would be approved of by all respect- 
able people. 

The Chief Judge has likewise a few secondary duties to perform. He ought to 
give the witnesses, — who are astonished by the novelty and solemnity of a court of 
justice, and embarrassed by the presence of judge and jury, by the nature of their 
evidence, or by the consequences of their oath, — he ought to give them ample time 
to recover themselves, and to be sure of their memory and their voice. He ought 
to address them with clearness and mildness ; and, if it be necessary, repeat the 
questions put to them. He ought to have the seats so arranged that the prisoner 
may see the jury, as well as be seen by them ; for the jury are the judges. A frown, 
a wink, a look, may warn the prisoner that he is going too far ; that he is getting 
wrong ; that he is injuring himself. He ought, from time to time, to have the 
windows of the court set open. These salutary precautions are too much neglected. 
Fancy the condition of a prisoner coming out of a moist, chill cell, wasted by sleep- 
less nights, emaciated, weak, sick at heart, and hardly able to collect himself in the 
dense, close atmosphere of the court ; the whole auditory reeks and steams ; the 
Judge should have pity on the prisoner, but pity too on the public, though nothing 
is less thought of. 

I pause, for all cannot be said. Our criminal law, our criminal procedure, our 
jurisprudence, the conduct of the trial, the jury-lists, the appointment and duties 
of the accusing and the presiding magistrate, the health and convenience of the 
courts, — all these things are somewhat behind-hand in the great race of improve- 
ment; but public opinion, the queen of free countries, watches over France with a 
hundred never-closing eyes, in the stillness of the night and in the turmoil of the 



136 



THE COURT OF ASSIZE. 



day. Public opinion, morally as well as physically, does more than half of what 
the police ought to do. Nothing escapes her control, neither ministers, nor kings, 
nor deputies, — those kings of another kind ; whichever way they turn, public 
opinion is by their side, with her goad in her hand. It is not good for themselves 
or for us that the judicial powers should slumber on the Bench. 
I am but a fly : I buzz, I teaze, but I arouse. 





THE ACTRESS'S MOTHER. 



BY L. COUAILHAC. 




^ADIES of a certain stamp in France, such as the 
Actress's Mother, very frequently go by the name of 
Madame de Saint Robert. The Actress's Mother is 
generally fifty years of age, having the last remnants 
of a sensitive heart, and a daughter upon whose head 
all her hopes repose. 

Madame de Saint Robert has been, formerly, either 
a low-comedy actress, who, in waiting-maid's parts, 
was the delight of Vitry - le - Francais, Quimper- 
Corentin, Oudenarde, and other French towns of about the same importance ; 
or a worn-out coquette, who, under the elder branch of the Bourbons, obtained 
the direction of a lottery- office, by means of the patronage of some old Chevalier 
of St. Louis, and who has been driven from her dingy Temple of Fortune by the 
late vote of the Chamber of Deputies ; or an ex-house-porteress from the Rue 
Coquenard, who has "given the very last rag off her back " to obtain for her " darling 
daughter" admission into the classes of the Conservatoire, and insure her a brilliant 
position in the world. Madame de Saint Robert, however, avows none of these 
origins. Since her daughter Aurelia's first appearance upon the stage, with " great 
applause," she considers them all much "too low" for her. It is absolutely neces- 
sary that she should have a " life and adventures" of her own, of purer alloy than 

T 



138 



THE ACTRESS'S MOTHER. 



such as these ; and she consequently has had the following history drawn up by a 
street- scrivener, which she has learnt by heart, and doles out upon every occasion. 
" M. de Saint Robert, in the time of the empire, was an officer in the regiment 
of the vieille garde. His personal appearance was so prepossessing that he was 
always called ' the handsome Saint Robert ;' and many a time did the petit caporal, 
when reviewing his ' staunch old boys,' give him a little familiar tap upon the cheek. 
All these different circumstances determined* me upon granting him my hand, in 
spite of the opposition of all the members of my noble family, who had just re* 
turned from emigration, and who were infested with all manner of prejudice. My 
Aurelia was the issue of this union. Poor child ! Heaven did not grant her a father 
long ! " 

At this point of her narrative, Madame de Saint Robert pulls a large blue-checked 
pocket-handkerchief out of her bag, wipes away two very convenient tears which 
roll down her wrinkled cheeks, and then goes on again. 

" The fatal expedition to Russia," she continues, " was resolved upon by the 
grand homme. M. de Saint Robert, who formed a part of the advanced guard, 
entered Moscow one of the first, and left it the last. Heaven had destined him a 
grave among the snows of Russia ! At the passage of the Beresina, the frozen sur- 
face of the stream cracked on all sides around him ; he almost touched the opposite 
bank ; one step more, and he would have been saved ! On a sudden, he heard be- 
hind him a cry of despair from one of his comrades : he turned to fly to his rescue. 
Vain heroism ! — the river opened, and engulfed them both ! " 

And here Madame de Saint Robert again pulls her large blue-checked pocket- 
handkerchief out of her bag, wipes away two fresh tears, and then goes on again. 

" Become a widow, I devoted myself to the education of Aurelia, whom I brought 
up in the practice of every virtue, and in the love of the arts ; and, as she displayed 
the most unquestionable talent for the stage, I did not 
hesitate a moment, without any regard for my noble 
and powerful family, to destine her for the dramatic 
career. Scarcely had the name of Aurelia de Saint 
Robert appeared upon the bills, when I received from 
St. Petersburg a threatening letter from my cousin 
Pamela, who had married a great Russian, the Prince 
Trombollinoi ; and so I went immediately to my 
friend the commissary of police, who told me to live 
in tranquillity and peace, under the protection of the 
laws of my country." 

Madame de Saint Robert here takes a long pinch of 
snuff, blows her nose as loudly as she can, and adds, 
by way of peroration, "And that's the long and the 
short of it." 
We are not aware that these last words are to be found in the scrivener's manu- 
script : they have been probably considered by the old lady a necessary addition to 
the story, by way of a finish. 

It would have been a curious sight to have seen the Actress's Mother the day 




THE ACTRESSES MOTHER. 139 

following her daughter's successful dtbut, — to have witnessed the delight that 
sparkled in her eyes ! — the air of triumph that overspread her physiognomy !— the 
jaunty manner of her walk! On that day, she was up by five o'clock in the morning, 
and straightways woke up the porteress, and the grocer, and the man at the liquor- 
shop, and the butcher, and the errand-boy at the corner, and to one and all she de- 
tailed the whole affair. 

" Oh, my little lambkins ! never was such a first appearance seen ! — One round 
of applause after another — one after another — never was anything like it ! The 
manager himself, worthy man, declared that he had never heard such thunders of 
applause within the walls of the theatre. And then the flowers ! — and the compli- 
ments ! — and the author of the piece, who was as red as fire — he was — and w r ho 
kissed my Aurelia twice, and called her his ' guardian angel ! ' — his angel, d'ye hear ? 
There was an honour ! We intend to sign an engagement for fifty francs a month, 
the dresses provided, and her shoe-leather paid for extra. I hope I'm well recom- 
pensed for all the sacrifices I have made. But then the fact is, Aurelia danced like 
a little Cupid, and sang like a nightingale, with such a voice, and such a foot and 
ankle ! So overcome was I with admiration, that, in the third act, I fainted right 
away in the arms of a fireman in the side- scenes, — and that 's the long and the 
short of it I" 

" And that 's the long and the short of it" — has become the burden of all the old 
lady's narratives. 

The first day of triumph may be given to joy, but the second is claimed by pride. 
In the first place, the Actress's Mother, who, up to this epoch, has always been 
called plain Madame Robert, begins to find out that her name is " a trifle vulgar." 
She determines, consequently, upon giving her name an aristocratic turn, and en- 
titles herself, from that moment, Madame de Saint Robert, the widow of M. de Saint 
Robert, who, in the time of the Empire, &c. &c. [see above]. This change in her 
name necessarily involves a change of habitation. In fact, it would be impossible 
for the Actress's Mother to make all her old gossips, who are accustomed to call her 
Ma'ame Robert, call her Madame de Saint Robert, as long as your arm. Besides, 
how should she possibly give herself, at her ease, all the airs of importance necessary 
upon the occasion ? — How toss up her head, and turn up her nose, in a quarter of 
the town where she has been known in such a needy state, where she has been 
under obligations to all the world, and where she has run most shamefully into debt 
with all the fruit-women, and grocers, and liquor-merchants, and similar great pro- 
viders of little households ? Madame de Saint Robert, therefore, leaves the Rue du 
Grand Hurleur to go and establish herself in the Rue de Lancry. 

From that moment commences a complete change in her manner of life. Madame 
de Saint Robert resigns her darning, needling, or her porteress's latch-string, which 
were her means of livelihood until then. She arranges her red- checked shawl a la 
Zamiely in majestic folds around her, and accompanies her daughter to every re- 
hearsal and performance ; she watches, day and night, over her precious treasure, 
for fear it should be carried off ; she dreads, more than all, for her Aurelia attach- 
ments of the heart, and " all that sort of humbug," for the dreams in which she in- 
dulges of her daughter's future fortunes are of the most magnificent description. In 



140 



THE ACTRESS S MOTHER. 



the excitement of her maternal ambition, she frequently marries her, without further 
ceremony, to an English Milor, or to a fair-haired Russian Prince, with the most 
extensively-padded chest, and the very smallest waist; she decks her with imaginary 
diamonds, sees her in vision mount into her carriage, and in spirit hails her Madame 
la Duchesse, or Madame la Pi'incesse. Her fears may be well imagined, conse- 
quently, lest some " Jessamy-fellow," by means of " honied words and murderous 
glances," should contrive to overthrow all this magnificent scaffolding of soft illu- 
sions. She trots after her Aurelia into the green-room, and into the dressing-room, 
and into the manager's room, and behind the scenes. She never quits her for a 
moment, until she is actually upon the stage, and then only stops upon the extremest 
verge of a side- scene. Her chief fears fall upon the dramatic authors, the news- 
paper critics, and the green-room loungers. As soon as she sees Aurelia in any- 
thing like close talk with any of those gentlemen, she hastily interposes her own 
person, and has her little word to add to the conversation. But the devil is sharper 
still, and Aurelia is both woman and actress. She is generally won either by senti- 
ment or vanity ; and at the very moment that her worthy mamma is honouring with 
her especial attention M. Alfred Ressigeac, the youthful editor of a twopenny the- 
atrical observer, whose assiduities to her daughter she has remarked, and whom she 
particularly mistrusts on account of his interesting attitudes, and his flattering 

critiques, Aurelia falls into the net of M. Charles 
J Lousteau, an author famous for his long black 
') locks, and eccentric dramatic productions. The 
~ bait was a new part in a new play. No scandal 
~ runs so quickly as green-room scandal. The next 
day the fall of the charming and cruel Aurelia is 
the general topic of the day, in green-room, 
saloon, side- scene, and manager's box ; and as 
there is nowhere any lack of " good-natured 
friends" and charitable souls, especially under 
the histrionic mask, "mamma" is not long before 
she hears the fatal news : but she neither lets fall 
her long hair adown her shoulders, in sign of 
mourning, like a Grecian mother, nor covers 
her head with ashes, nor seeks to starve her- 
self and die ; she utters neither malediction nor 
groan; she lets fall only the simple exclamation of " The dirty blackguard! " — never 
says a word to Aurelia ; and acts upon the principle of the proverb, " What can- 
not be cured must be endured." The only difference is, that the views of Madame 
de Saint Robert are now turned in another direction. She disposes of her ex- 
istence, and arranges her future destiny, according to the circumstances. Her 
dreams are no longer of marriage, but " protection ;" and, as a breach has now been 
battered in her maternal affection, and its native purity despoiled by egotism, — as 
henceforward her own interests have a right to occupy as large a share of her 
thoughts as those of her daughter, — the visions of her mind no longer picture forth 
the fair-haired Russian Prince, with the very small waist, above mentioned, but 




THE ACTRESSES MOTHER. 141 

some banker from Amsterdam or Frankfort-on-the-Maine, excessively bald and 
enormously corpulent. In order to make way for this ton of gold, she must 
first get rid of the " happy man" of the day, M. Charles Lousteau, the author so 
famous for his long black locks, and eccentric dramatic productions. To effect this 
purpose, all the powers of malicious contrivance which nature has allotted to the 
Actress's Mother are called into play. She sends M. Charles upon a walk to the 
garden of the Luxembourg, while Aurelia is at the Tuileries ; she begs for the favour 
of his arm to go and see the Luxor Obelisk, or the Arch of Triumph, at the other 
end of the Champs Elysees ; she talks to him in every tone of lamentation of her 
daughter's shocking debts ; she shuts the door in his face when he calls, and tells 
him the next day that she took him for a creditor : so that, at last, M. Charles 
Lousteau, alarmed by these frequent appeals to his empty purse, fatigued with his 
sentimental promenades with the mamma, and irritated by the cool reception of 
Aurelia, who has been very adroitly set against him by her mother's manoeuvres, all 
at once gives up the game ; and a few days afterwards, upon the same place which 
he usually occupied upon the modest sofa of 
yellow calico, may be seen an abdomen of very 
prominent proportions, surmounted by a sort of 
awkward attempt at something like a human 
face, and terminated below by a pair of very 
short, little legs. This thing is a banker. The 
creditors are paid, the rooms new furnished, a 
real Cashmere shawl replaces the humbler " Ter- 
naux," and Madame de Saint Robert is tri- 
umphant ! 

Here, however, an explanatory digression is 
necessary, in order to unravel the inevitable con- 
fusion which takes place in the two great varie- 
ties of the species of the Actress's Mother, — the 
veritable mother, the mother direct, the maternal mother, if I may so call her, and 
the mother that is " jobbed." 

A few words will explain the nature of the mother upon hire. There may be 
seen " about town," in Paris, a generation of old women with well-pimpled noses 
and shoeing-horn chins, who form, upon the whole, a very numerous legion. They 
have neither family, friends, nor acquaintances. No one has any cognizance of their 
previous lives ; no one can ever recollect to have seen them young. One might 
almost imagine — Heaven forgive me ! — that they had fallen from the sky one fine 
day, all wrinkled and decrepit, like a shower of toads ; or rather had issued, one 
dark winter's night, out of some vent-hole of the " realms below," astride upon 
enormous broomsticks. They all of them wear faded pink hats, worm-eaten puce 
silk gowns, patent pattens, tricoloured umbrellas, and spectacles. They are to be 
met with by day in the Palais Royal, or upon the Boulevarts, warming their withered 
carcasses in the sun. These old harpies adore the society of the queens of the 
theatrical world ; and whenever a young girl with a pretty face, a well-turned foot 
and ankle, and an agreeable figure, has made a successful first appearance upon a 




142 the actress's mother. 

Parisian stage, and passed advantageously through the ordeal of opera-glasses, from 
the stage-boxes and the stalls, she is sure to have a call the following morning from 
an old woman, exactly corresponding to the description just given, who looks upon 
her with an air of compassion, and then commences the conversation in a wheedling 
tone : — 

" My dear child," she says, " you are now launched, at a very tender age, upon 
a sea fertile in wrecks. You need a pilot. I am exactly what you want. I will be 
a mother to you." 

With that she embraces her impromptu daughter with a tear in her eye, and goes 
to see after the kitchen. With her you may be sure of one fact : if the poor little 
actress has not yet fallen, her fall, at least, is not far off. 

A mother " upon hire" is generally paid a hundred francs a month, and expects, 
besides her little profits, her coffee every morning, and considerate treatment. On 
her own part, propriety of appearance and decent dress are indispensable. 

At the pitch to which Aurelia has arrived, and after all the sacrifices so comfort- 
ably made by the virtuous scruples of Madame de Saint Robert, there exists no 
longer any difference between herself and the mother by adoption. Every shade of 
distinction has disappeared, and all is merged in the one qualification of the Actress's 
Mother. 

To continue. At ten o'clock in the morning, Madame de Saint Robert gets up, 
and forthwith kneels down by her bed-side, and thanks God for having bestowed 
upon her so excellent and meritorious a daughter. With this act of thanksgiving, 
she commences her day; and then, with a cotton 'kerchief upon her head, and a very 
greasy dressing-gown wrapped around her, she trots down into the kitchen, where 
she superintends the preparations for breakfast. After having fed her parrot, and 
her canaries, and her cat, and her hideous little black dog, she turns her thoughts 
to Aurelia. She inquires of the maid whether " the gentleman" is there (" the 
o-entleman," by the way, cannot abide the sight of her), and carries a cup of choco- 
late to her daughter's bed-side. There is no end then to her little endearments, and 
her tender admiration of her child : she bepraises her hair, and her teeth, and her 
complexion. " And only think," she adds, " that she should be as like as two peas 
to her big blackguard of a father!" And then she flings her arms about her 
daughter's neck, and kisses her over, and presses her to her heart, and calls her 
" her darling, her duck, her little cosset, her precious treasure," until Aurelia, 
fatigued with all these demonstrations of affection, which are renewed every morning 
with the same vivacity, and about the same sincerity, says, with the greatest possible 
respect, " Mamma, can't you just make yourself scarce ?" 

Aurelia has the greatest confidence in her own maid, Mademoiselle Felicity. It is 
she who aids her to conceal from her mother's eyes, and those of her " protector," 
all the little joys and petty intrigues which form the incidental interest of her ex- 
istence. Her preference for her maid betrays itself every moment, and " mamma," 
consequently, is terribly jealous of the favourite. She is always scolding and 
snubbing her ; and is sure, on all occasions, to discover something to find fault with 
in her work. Every time her daughter is on the point of entering on the stage, she 
never fails of exclaiming, — " What a figure, to be sure, Felieite has made of you ! 




THE ACTRESS S MOTHER. 143 

Only look at the way she has arranged this fold ! and this hump on your back ! 
Was ever such a horror seen ? Take my word for it, you will never make any 
thing of that stupid slut !" But Aurelia turns a 
deaf ear ; and she has her own reasons for so 
doing. As to Felicite\ sure of an influence based 
upon the secrets she has in her possession, she 
sets herself up audaciously against Madame de 
Saint Robert ; she answers her with insolence ; 
she affects to regard her with looks of bravado and 
contempt : and, in the midst of all the immorali- 
ties of such a life, this daily war, carried on be- 
tween the mother and the maid, and constantly 
terminating in favour of the latter, is not the 
least immoral trait : it is, however, one of the 
inevitable consequences of the respective positions 
of these three persons. Any one of the laws of 
society once trodden under foot, it is vain to think 
of claiming the benefit of the rest. One mesh in 
the net let fall, the whole unravels. Where the opinion of the world has been dis- 
dained, the world repays in kind ; and he who has disdained it, becomes a " paria," 
beyond the pale of social arrangements. For him, man's respect, rank, distance, 
the distinctions of education, position, fortune, exist no longer. Oh ! vice is a 
merciless leveller ! 

Twelve o'clock arrives, and it is time to start for the theatre. There is generally 
a rehearsal of some new play, in which Aurelia has a very important part. Madame 
de Saint Robert invariably accompanies her daughter: it is more decorous. Besides, 
she likes being seen with Aurelia : her maternal pride is agreeably flattered, when- 
ever she perceives the eyes of the persons she meets fixed with curiosity upon her 
cherished offspring. On such occasions she holds up her head ; she marches with 
a grave and triumphant step ; her face beams with joy ; and, if she might, she 
would shout out in the street to inform every passer-by — " Yes, gentlemen, it is 

Aurelia de Saint Robert, who acts at the Theatre, and was so immensely 

applauded in such-and-such a piece, — and I am her mother, gentlemen J" 

On arriving at the theatre, Madame de Saint Robert gives a little dry nod to 
the stage-door porteress, one of the ruling powers of the scene, with whom she has 
long been upon bad terms. It would be difficult, however, to cite in the whole 
theatre a single person with whom she stands upon an amicable footing : her sour 
temper places her in a state of open hostility with the whole human race. She has 
quarrelled with the box-keepers — she has quarrelled with the prompter — she has 
quarrelled with the stage- carpenter — she has quarrelled with the leader of the band 
— she has quarrelled with the understrappers, one and all ! As soon, therefore, as 
she makes her appearance at the theatre, a most expressive grimace is visible upon 
the physiognomy of all around. 

In one of the passages Aurelia is met by the stage-manager, looking half-scared. 

" Ah ! there you are at last, Mademoiselle Aurelia," he exclaims. " I was going 




144 the actress's mother. 

to send to your lodgings for you. You are more than a quarter of an hour too 
late !" 

"Well! and if we are, what harm!" retorts the mother, sharply. " What a 
pucker he's in, the poor dear man ! One would think the world was at an end ! 
Respectable folks must have their time, let me tell you. We are not, thank 
Heaven ! like your cross-grained animal of a danseuse, who breakfasts upon nothing 
better than a bunch of radishes, in order to lay by 
in the Savings' Bank, and never puts on her stays at 
home, for fear of the wear and tear !" 

" It is not you I am speaking to, ma'am, but your 
daughter." 

" But it is I who choose to answer, mon cher. 
Although things are come to a pretty pass now-a- 
days, a mother's always a mother." 

" Mademoiselle Aurelia," says the stage-manager, 
turning to the daughter, " we shall be forced to put 
on the fine." 

" Well ! and if you do," resumes the mamma, 
" your fine shall be paid. Parole d'honneur ! a poor 
actress' pay is all taken off in fines — and pretty pay 
it is, after all. Never mind, we are not reduced yet 
to live upon nut- shells. Pretty airs the fellow 
gives himself! Parole d'honneur ! he is like as two peas to the frog in the fable, 
puffing and blowing like that ! — but it's beneath one's notice, parole d'honneur /" 
The stage-manager shrugs his shoulders, and Aurelia half dies with laughing. 
The manager and the author of the new piece have been waiting for some time 
on the stage, giving frequent signs of impatience, and let fall a most expressive 
" Ah !" when Aurelia makes her appearance. The manager, however, seems by no 
means pleased on seeing Madame de Saint Robert. The Actress's Mother is one of 
the manager's natural antipathies. He knows to his cost that she brings in her 
train noise, confusion, and dispute ; that she can never hold her tongue, and is sure 
to disturb all the rehearsals and readings of a new piece ; that Aurelia, in fact, would 
be an excellent member of his company, if her mother were not continually putting 
fancies in her head, and disaffecting her towards the management of the theatre. 
On all these manifold accounts he would be delighted if Madame de Saint Robert 
could be refused admission to the stage : but it is impossible. Aurelia, in signing 
her engagement, has stipulated that her mother should accompany her. Almost 
all the French actresses of easy morals demand a free admission at the stage door, 
both for their mother and their " gentleman." One of the two, certainly, appears 
rather out of place. 

" Come, let's begin," cries the manager. 

" Sir, if you please," says Madame de Saint Robert, who is not one to let go her 
hold easily, " you would do well to recommend your stage-manager to be a little 
more gallant with the ladies. He has treated my daughter and me so shockingly, 
that I thought the poor dear child would have gone into fits." 



THE ACTRESS'S MOTHER. 



145 




" Very well, ma'am, that will do." 

" And as for your fine — your fine shall be paid. We are not reduced yet to live 
upon nutshells." 

Madame de Saint Robert then goes and takes her seat in a box, in order to ad^ 
mire her daughter, and see the new piece quite at her 
ease. But she cannot possibly remain on her seat all 
alone without communicating her sentiments, or con- 
fiding her spiteful observations to some ready ear. 
She catches sight, on the other side of the orchestra, 
of Madame de Saint Julian, the mother of another 
actress, who stutters so that she cannot pronounce two 
words together. With her she can have all the ad- 
vantages of the conversation to herself: and so she 
hastens to the side of Madame de Saint Julian. 

The overture is about to commence, and the orchestra 
is preluding a few notes. 

" Bon," says Madame de Saint Robert, " I am just 
in time — ha ! ha !" 

" Silence !" cries the stage-manager. 

A tremendous crash of kettle-drums announces the 
opening of the overture. 

" Well ! there !" says Madame de Saint Robert, " if it isn't exactly the same in 
' Bugg or the Japonese.' " 

" Silence !" cries the stage-manager. 

The curtain rises. An entirely new scene displays all its magnificence at the 
back of the stage. The privileged spectators, scattered here and there in the 
boxes, hail it with two or three rounds of applause. The manager and author of 
the piece congratulate the scene-painter, and shake hands with him heartily. 

" And a pretty sort of a scene it is, after all," says Madame de Saint Robert* 
" Why, I have seen better than that in my days at the Panorama Dramatique." 

" Silence !" cries the stage -manager. 

The play begins. Aurelia, who has a first-rate part in the piece, spares neither 
arms nor lungs to please the author. Her voice gets a little hoarse, and all on a 
sudden, in the midst of a speech full of passion and pathos, her mother interrupts 
her with the exclamation, "Take a few of your acidulated drops, my love; — I 
have put a whole paper-full in your bag — they will do you good, my dear." 

" Silence !" cries the stage-manager. 

" Silence there !" re-echoes the manager; " silence, Madame de Saint Robert* 
It is impossible to go on rehearsing so." 

" Well ! I shall hold my tongue. One would think, to hear them, that it 
was a crime to do one's own child a little good." 

The plot of the piece becomes more complicated ; and one of the characters is 
stabbed to the heart by the traitor's dagger. 

" Well ! there !" continues Madame de Saint Robert, aloud, "it's exactly the 
same thing in ' Cardaillac,' — and that's what you have for your money." 

u 



146 THE ACTRESSES MOTHER. 

" Silence !" cries the stage-manager. 

" This is insupportable !" exclaims the author of the piece. 

"Positively insupportable!" chimes in the manager. "In Heaven's name, can't 
you hold your tongue, Madame de Saint Robert ?" 

"As if I could'nt hold my tongue if I pleased." 

The manager grows furious ; and, if he were not afraid of disobliging Aurelia, 
who has almost all the weight of the piece upon her shoulders, and depriving 
her of the energy necessary for the performance, he would beg Madame de Saint 
Robert to walk out of the theatre. 

The piece continues — the interesting moment arrives, when the heroine throws 
herself into the hero's arms, and swears to die rather than give her hand to the 
villain, whom she hates and despises. 

" Well, there !" recommences Madame de Saint Robert, aloud; " they call that 
new, do they ? Why, I have seen that in ' Tekeli,' and I have seen it in ' Fitz- 
Henry,' and I have seen it in the ' Ruins of Babylon,' and I have seen it in the 
• Poor Shepherd,' and then they have the effrontery to call that a new piece ! Upon 
my word!" 

" Silence !" cries the stage-manager. 

" There is no standing it any longer," exclaims the author of the piece. 

" No, positively — there's no standing it any longer," chimes in the manager. 
" Madame de Saint Robert, it is with infinite regret, — but really I shall be obliged 
to ask you to quit the house." 

" Me quit the house !" cries Madame de Saint Robert, springing up with light- 
nings in her eyes, " I should like to see you make me quit the house ! That's 
the respect you have for my sex and my grey hairs — to treat me like a brute 
beast ! And if I were to quit the house, my daughter should go with me, and 
never set foot again in your dirty barn — and that's what she should !" 

Aurelia makes signs to her mother to be pacified, and the old lady sits down 
again grumbling. The manager and the author swallow their wrath as best they 
may. 

In spite of the severe and repeated admonitions which she has received, Ma- 
dame de Saint Robert, nothing daunted, is far from moderating the fire of her 
criticism. One of the actors gesticulates like a telegraph — one of the actresses 
is as cold as ice — one of the best points in the plot is pillaged from M. de 
Pixericourt (the great melodrame manufacturer of his day) — one of the new scenes 
would be hissed at the very lowest theatre in Paris. At last the manager, 
driven out of all patience, entreats Aurelia to get rid of her mother. Aurelia 
goes round to her, and persuades her to go and wait till the termination of the 
rehearsal in the green-room. At length she retires, not, however, without crying, 
as loud as she can, " Well, I'm going, but it is to please my daughter, and not you 
— impertinent pack of fellows : — to treat a poor female in that manner ; — and they 
call themselves Frenchmen, do they ? — pretty Frenchmen !" 

In the green-room, Madame de Saint Robert stamps and scolds for a time alone. 
But, at last, she can rest no longer without some confidential bosom into which to 
pour the torrent of her wrath, and she seeks in every hole and corner of the theatre 



THE ACTRESS S MOTHER. 



U7 




for a living being. At last she descries a lamp -lighter, quietly occupied in trimming 
the stage lamps for the evening's performance. That is quite enough for her ; she 
makes up to him immediately, and, without leaving him time to breathe, launches 
out into her invectives. 

" He's a beauty — your ape of a manager ! about as 
polite as a Hottentot. It is since he has been living 
with that Ma'amselle Leonide, I suppose, that he has 
learnt these sort of manners. Upon my word, a very 
charming school. Why ! the creature's mother sold 
kitchen stuff in the market : like mother like daughter. 
After all, he is no better than she ; birds of a feather 
flock together ; a word to the wise, you know." 

Madame de Saint Robert would go on for hours, 
talking, after the same fashion, to the astounded candle- 
snuffer, did not the signal for the conclusion of the 
rehearsal sound upon her ear. She hastens on to the 
stage. In one of the passages she meets the " tiger " 
of her daughter's " protector," who informs her that 
his master's carriage is below, and that, as the weather 
is fine, "the ladies" are invited to make use of 
it for a drive in the Bois de Boulogne. At this intelligence, Madame de 
Saint Robert quickens her step and advances triumphantly upon the stage, fol- 
lowed by the tiger. She throws a disdainful glance upon manager, stage-manager, 
and author, jostles insolently all the females standing in her way, and calls out to 
Aurelia, with an air of grandeur, " Come, child, our carriage is waiting." 

She hurries away her daughter with all possible fracas, springs into the carriage, 
with a patronising wave of the hand to all the actors and actresses grouped at the 
windows of the theatre, and calls out to the coachman, " To the Bois de Boulogne 
— by the Rue de Lancry." 

The coachman hesitates for a moment, for the Rue de Lancry is not exactly the 
straightest way from the Boulevarts to the Bois de Boulogne. But Madame de 
Saint Robert calls out again in an angry tone, " By the Rue de Lancry — don't you 
hear — fellow ?" 

The coachman hesitates no longer. He would drive to the Bois de Boulogne by 
the other end of Paris if he were ordered. It is the horses who have all the fatigue. 
Off they start for the Rue de Lancry, and there, in passing before the house in 
which she lives, Madame de Saint Robert does all she can to be remarked by all 
her neighbours. She enjoys to her heart's content the marks of admiration bestowed 
by the tradespeople whom she honours with her custom, and the more humble 
lodgers, who live upon the floors above her. But she is excessively mortified at not 
seeing in her balcony the comptroller's lady who lives on the first floor, who is "so 
mighty proud of her husband," and who has never condescended to take any notice 
of her advances. 

At the Bois de Boulogne, Madame de Saint Robert is " bored to death." All 
the world of fashionables around her, whom she does not know, and with whom 



148 THE ACTRESSES MOTHER. 

she has never lived, is nothing to her. She feels herself ill at ease in the presence 
of their grand aristocratic manners, and their style of dress — so simply elegant, so 
nobly worn. It is no good her having put on her yellow hat and feathers, and her 
Cashmere shawl with broad gold palm leaves, and her pink and silver gown — all 
her glittering finery, in fact, the somewhat faded elements of which she has culled 
out of the cast-off dresses, and old theatrical wardrobe of her daughter; she is 
unable to muster up her usual assurance — she feels that she is not in her place. 
Her delight would be, if she could, to drive, in all her splendour of recent date, to 
Belleville, to the Rue du Grand Hurleur, to any other of the suburban localities of 
Paris, where she once occupied the humblest grade in life, and where her former 
miserable state has not been yet forgotten. 

The carriage drives home. Then follow all the voluptuous delights of dinner ; 
for, in addition to her other qualities, the Actress's Mother possesses a con- 
siderable tendency to gluttony. After the dinner comes the coffee — and after the 
coffee, the pousse-caf 6, consisting in three glasses of liqueur des iles, of the strongest 
possible manufacture — and then the "ladies" start for the theatre for the per- 
formance of the evening. 

Madame de Saint Robert, whose head is now a little affected, is still more insup- 
portable than she was in the morning. She sits down in a corner of her daughter's 
dressing-room to superintend her toilet ; and there she never allows the maid or 
the dressing- woman of the theatre a single moment's peace. She attacks them 
incessantly, and quarrels with them for every trifle. Sometimes it is the sleeve 
that does not sit well — and then it is the petticoat that is too high — or the head- 
dress that is too low — and then again the rouge that is badly put on. Happily they 
have been long accustomed to let her scold in her corner all alone, and pay no more 
attention to her than if she did not exist. 

Ding, ding, ding, ding, goes the prompter's bell ; and a rough voice from the 
bottom of the stairs calls out to ask whether the ladies are ready. 

" No, they are not," cries Madame de Saint Robert, rushing to the staircase, with 
a screeching voice, which contrasts drolly enough with the stentorian tones of the 
overgrown call-boy. " My daughter is not ready — it is all very well for those who 
have nothing to put on their backs to be ready in an hour. What's the good of 
hurrying one in that way." 

At last Aurelia comes down. " Mamma" follows her, takes a chair out of the 
green-room, and, in spite of the manager's prohibition, seats herself in one of the 
front wings, in order to be able to judge of the effect of the piece. There she finds 
three or four old chattering hags already installed, and among them Madame de 
Saint Julian. The stage-manager at last discovers this brood of old women, 
and routs them all out : they do no more, however, than transport their penates 
to the other side of the stage, whither they are again pursued by the stage- 
manager. 

" Ladies, you know very well," he angrily exclaims, " that it is not allowed to 
sit in the wings in that way. Carry your chairs back to the green-room." 

" Very well, sir ! very well, sir !" replies Madame de Saint Robert. " We are 
not going to eat your chairs or your wings." 



THE ACTRESS'S MOTHER. 



149 




Away flies the whole covey of old women again before the stage -manager, and 
settles quietly down in the same spot as at first. The manager has sent for their per- 
secutor to his room ; and they are left in peace for a few minutes, at least. A circle 
is formed, that one might fancy a round of witches. An animated and rapid conver- 
sation ensues, the web of which is of the most entangled description. All the good 
ladies want to be heard at once. Madame de Saint Julian can never contrive to 
finish a sentence : before she has done stammer- 
ing out her first word, her neighbour has let 
loose a score or two ; and she thus never gets 
beyond her exordium. Would that she could 
find imitators among several orators of my ac- 
quaintance, whom I could name if I would. 

Each of the old ladies recounts, for the fiftieth 
time at least, the history of her life. One of 
them is the widow of a banker, who lost all his 
fortune in the Spanish funds ; another is the 
daughter of a lady of rank, who never told her 
name, and who put her out to board, up to the 
age of twenty, at a baker's at Courbevoie, and 
then, all at once, ceased to give any further news 
of herself. [Marks of surprise and indignation from 
the auditors] . A third declares that she should 
have been immensely rich, if, in the year 1815, the Cossacks had not dis- 
covered the spot where she had buried all the wealth she had won in the lottery. 
As to Madame de Saint Robert, she repeats her history of her unfortunate alliance 
with M. de Saint Robert, the finest man in the vieille garde, and the favourite of the 
Emperor Napoleon. 

After all these oft-told tales, as the piece is not yet begun, other topics of con- 
versation are resorted to. 

" And tell me, Ma'ame St. Julian," says Madame St. Phar, " where did you buy 
your dress ?'' 

" At Ma'ame Ca-ca-ca-ca-" 

"Ah! Madame Cabot's — I understand," interrupts Saint Phar; "it must have 
cost you fifty sous the ell at least." 

" No, f-f-f-f-" 

" Ah ! forty, I understand, and no great bargain either. To be sure ! how they 
do rob the poor people now-a-days ! and one of your fading colours too — that will 
never wash, you may take my word for it. Look here; here's a colour for 
you — and never cost but thirty-five — and just feel — that's what I call something 
like!" 

" I'm sure I don't know how you manage, Ma'ame Saint Phar," snaps Madame 
de Saint Robert, " but you always get your things cheaper than any one else." 

" It's because I hunt about, my dear Ma'ame — there is no better hand at a bar- 
gain than I." 

Silence ! — the three blows on the stage, the usual signal for commencement in the 



150 THE ACTRESSES MOTHER. 

French theatres, are struck : and the new piece, upon which the manager founds 
the most immense hopes, appears at last before the public. 

Neither Madame de Saint Robert nor Madame de Saint Phar fail in giving their 
tongues free swing during the course of the performance. 

" Just look at Leonide," says the former, "■ there's a figure ! she calls those hips, 
does she ! Why, she might as well have stuffed out her gown on either side with a 
couple of deal boards. Ha ! ha ! ha !" 

"And Francine!" resumes Saint Phar. "There's an affected minx for you, 
making eyes at the young fellows in the stage boxes ; it's really indecent, upon the 
word of an honest woman, it is. Oh ! if I had anything to do with affairs here, her 
gray hairs should'nt grow on these boards." 

" I say, Ma'ame Saint Phar, did'nt you hear a hiss ?" 

" What already ! we are only at the second act." 

" I told them this morning that the piece was'nt worth a sou." 

" Bon ! there's Alfred broke down in his long speech — Well ! I'm not sorry for it; 
ever since that fellow has taken to act a tragedy part or two, there's no coming near 
him — he's as proud as you please !" 

" I say ! Ma'ame Saint Phar ! they are hissing again. The piece would be 
damned to a certainty if my daughter were not there to carry it off." 

" Your daughter ! Ma'ame Saint Robert : I didn't wish to make an unpleasant 
remark just now, but it seems to me that she did not go down with the public at all 
to-night, when she first went on." 

" What ! my daughter !" screams Madame de Saint Robert ; " why you must be 
deaf; she was applauded enough to bring the whole house down." 

"Yes, by the claqueurs, Ma'ame, not by the veritable audience. It's not like my 
daughter, my Eugenia ! What a triumph she had last night ! Her claqueurs were 
the whole house, Ma'ame, the people in the boxes, and the stalls, and the stage-boxes. 
That's what I call applause." 

" Saint Phar ! I'm perfectly astonished at you ! As if every one did'nt know 
how far your daughter's talents go. Why ! she does'nt even know how to walk 
yet." 

" At any rate she'll never learn that of your lolloping Aurelia : she does'nt walk 
at all ; she rolls on to the stage." 

" And that's better than being so thin as to poke your fellow actor's eye out with 
your elbows." 

" Your Aurelia only gets new parts because she makes up to the authors." 

" Your Eugenia would never act at all if she were not ' no better than she should 
be' with the stage -manager." 

" Your daughter is only a makeshift." 

" And yours is worse than nothing at all." 

"You old fool!" 

" You old pauper, you !" 

Up go the " ladies' " hands : and the wordy duel would become a duel of a more 
serious nature, did not a fireman upon duty, like a true French cavalier, throw 
himself betwen the combatants. 



THE ACTRESSES MOTHER. 151 

Between the acts, Madame de Saint Robert gives a look at the theatre through 
the hole in the curtain, and says to her daughter, who has thrown herself into a 
Gothic chair, and is puffing at her ease in order to get strength to go through the 
last act, " Aurelia ! did you see your old man in the first tier ? Just give him a nice 
little glance from time to time : there's nothing flatters a man like that. You 
always look as if you did not see him, and you'll see, with all her airs and graces, 
Francine will carry him off from you at last ; and he's a catch, my dear." 

During the whole interval between the last two acts, Madame de Saint Robert 
watches over her daughter like a hen over her chick. There is no possibility of 
getting near Aurelia. Whoever advances a step towards her is sure of finding 
himself face to face with the mamma : and then there is nothing to do but to retreat. 
The fact is, that the Actress's Mother knows well enough that, at the first represent- 
ation of a new piece, the stage swarms with authors, and newspaper critics, and 
artists, all clever fellows in their way, very charming, and very seductive, but little 
capable of rendering a woman happy, according to Madame de Saint Robert's view 
of the case. 

" My dear child," she says to Aurelia, " take care of all those scribbling, daubing, 
dancing fellows, and the like : they are not the sort of people ever to find you salt 
for your porridge, my dear." 

In the fifth act the piece recovers itself, thanks to the claqueurs : the catastrophe* 
warmly supported by these gentry, goes off without hindrance ; and Aurelia is called 
out after the fall of the curtain. Madame de Saint Robert receives her all palpi- 
tating with emotion in her maternal arms, and cries out to Madame de Saint Phar, 
who has never budged from her corner, " I should like to see your Eugenia carry 
off such a triumph as that !" 

Returned home, Madame de Saint Robert mixes a bowl of rum punch in order to 
celebrate the double triumph of the evening. About three o'clock in the morning, 
she regains her room with somewhat tottering steps, and goes to bed, not, however, 
without again thanking God for having bestowed upon her so excellent and merit- 
orious a daughter. 

I have let you know the character and habits of the Actress's Mother, — I will now 
tell you her end. 

Aurelia, who is of a weak, lazy, careless disposition, allowing herself to float 
quietly down life's stream, at one time obeying her own caprices, at another the 
will of those around her, but always without reflection, at eight-and-twenty years of 
age — the very time when she ought to begin to grow a little more reasonable — is 
caught in the snare so much dreaded for her by her mother : she falls desperately in 
love with M. Victor Rousseau, an author about forty years of age, a careless, de- 
bauched, good-for-nothing, merry fellow, who makes her die of laughing every time 
he opens his mouth. After a youth of the most stormy nature, M. Victor Rousseau 
possesses about as much fortune as consists in five or six vaudevilles, a few articles 
for the lesser periodicals, and a host of creditors, — not quite the baggage for walking 
at one's ease through the dusty ways of life. Aurelia pays her Adonis's debts, and 
marries him. Her mother, who sees all the savings of the household daily dimi- 
nishing, can keep no terms with her son-in-law ; and so the married couple make 



152 



THE ACTRESS'S MOTHER. 



her an allowance of six hundred francs a year, upon condition that she should go 
and live in the Rue Copeau, Faubourg Saint Marcel, in a boarding-house for both 
sexes, and never recross the river. 

The first moment of her rage gone by, Madame de Saint Robert grows accus- 
tomed to her exile. She becomes very devout, goes to mass every morning, and to 
confession twice a week ; and dies in a fit the day she is told that Aurelia has a 
lover. 




^ 





THE DILETTANTE. 



BY ALBERT CLER. 




ONG will the important and unforeseen events pro- 
duced by the French Revolution (we of course speak of 
the first) be felt and remembered. Not only has it 
effected radical changes in the whole moral, social, and 
political atmosphere, but, if we are to believe its op- 
ponents, it has likewise upset all order, both natural 
and physical. Listen to some of the people whom 
M« Chateaubriand calls the men of the olden time. If 
to-day the weather is somewhat overcast, if your um- 
brella is constantly in requisition, if the spring should happen to be none of the 
longest or the finest, or if green peas in the month of May should chance to be a 
dainty sought for, it is wholly to the Revolution of 89 that it is to be attributed. 

Without allowing ourselves to be misled for a moment by any such exaggerations, 
we imagine that we have every reason for asserting that the Revolution has exer- 
cised a very strong and extraordinary influence upon Dilettantism in France. In 
former times people sang .... for singing's sake, as, indeed, birds sing, by a kind 
of natural instinct. The quantity of tra de ri de ras, of tra la las, of la fari don 
don, la fari don daines, of ton taine, ton tons, &c, which in reality formed the 
principal portion of the songs of the olden time, is at once proof positive that our 
ancestors sang without either forethought or affectation. These choruses, as far as 
meaning goes, forcibly remind us of the warbling of the thrush or starling. 

Formerly, what has since been called the fine company- singer, was perfectly un- 

x 



154 THE DILETTANTE. 

known. Every body sang of love, of wine, and women, off-hand, and without 
ceremony, for his own personal enjoyment. It was considered rather as an affair 
of merriment than of the throat. 

Choruses the most joyous were chanted at the conclusion of every meal, and 
just as naturally as canary birds would sing after they had finished eating. By 
way of prolonging the pleasure as much as possible, the number of verses generally 
averaged from fifteen to twenty, to say nothing of the obligato choruses. It might 
have been said at that time, that every thing concluded with songs which never 
did conclude. 

In the time of the Republic and the Empire, the Marseillaise, the Chant du 
Depart, &c, gave a patriotic and warlike turn to the national melodies. After the 
Invasion, and in the early part of the Restoration, when Chauvinism* had monopo- 
lized every thing, not even excepting crockery and pocket-handkerchiefs, — when 
people wiped their foreheads with the shred of a flag of the old guard, or the trouser 
leg of a Cossack, — when one used to eat creams upon the field of battle of Eylau 
and of Moskowa, songs were dedicated d, la Colonne, au Grognard, d, la Gloire, 
a la Victoire, and aux Succes des Francais. Still more recently, thanks to 
Beranger, songs have been converted into a means of political opposition. At the 
present moment, singing has become, generally speaking, an affair of vanity, and 
in many instances a matter of calculation. It must be well understood, that our 
preceding observations, as well as those that are about to follow, do not apply in 
the slightest degree to professionals, who, indeed, have always formed a separate 
class, but merely and exclusively to amateurs. — Nobody sings at the present time 
but with the hope of rendering himself conspicuous — the design of making an im- 
pression. Scarcely, even in country dinner parties, is the old custom kept up of 
asking the guests each in turn to sing something or another ; and the affectation of 
Dilettantism has caused the banishment, as something too vulgar for endurance, of 
what were formerly called songs of the table. Now, instead of songs of the table, 
there is nothing to be heard but songs at the table. In lieu of 

" Come, to the lasses 
Fill, fill your glasses, 

And merrily let us sing in chorus ; 
Let no one refrain, 
To fill, fill again, 

As our fathers did before us, — " 

people persist in chanting the most melancholy and plaintive ditties ; occasionally, 
even the funereal cavatina sung by Rachel in " The Jewess," or by Ninetta in " La 
Gazza Ladra," previous to walking to execution. Very amusing this, no doubt. 

Lately, at a dinner party in one of the provinces, at which we had the pleasure 
of being present, a local Duprez thought proper, in the midst of the dessert, to 
favour the company with the grand solo Asile htreditaire, and finished the very 
warlike verse " Suivez-moi " brandishing his fork, by way of a sword, in the most 
ferocious manner imaginable. 

It is only, however, at dinner-parties in small towns, when the time arrives for 
every one to sing in turn, that one really sees those capital comedy scenes of which 
* Chauvin was the pseudo-author of a popular song, consecrated to the glory of the French army. 



THE DILETTANTE. 155 

Henri Monnier, in his sketch entitled Un Diner Bourgeois, has given so humorous 
and faithful a picture : one singer pretending to be diffident and nervous, and ap- 
pearing as though he were anxious to decline, while he is positively broiling with 
impatience to make himself heard in what he considers his most striking song : 
another, after having been begged and entreated for above half an hour, winding 
up, by giving vent to a feeble and unmeaning verse ; and then the young lady, con- 
strained to sing by maternal, or, as the case may be, by paternal authority, which, 
with sundry variations, is conducted in the following manner : — 

THE MAMMA. 

Now, my love, sing us a piece. 

THE DAUGHTER. 

But, my dear mamma, I'm so nervous. 

THE MAMMA. 

Nonsense, my dear, now don't be foolish ; come, get up, and hold yourself 
straight. Now father, you can prompt her, you know. " In vain the gentle lute." 

the father (prompting). 
11 In vain the gentle lute you play." 

the daughter (standing up and singing). 

" In vain the gentle lute I play." 

THE father. 
"And tune in vain the roundelay." 

the daughter. 

" In vain the gentle lute I play, 
And tune in vain the roundelay." 

THE FATHER. 

" Since love thy bosom hath forsaken." 

THE DAUGHTER. 

" In vain the gentle lute I play, 
And tune in vain the roundelay ; 
Since love ray bosom hath forsaken." 

THE FATHER. 

" Music will only grief awaken." 

THE DAUGHTER. 
" Music will only grief awaken." 
the mamma (in a pet). 
Now just be so good as to sit yourself down, miss ; we have quite enough of your 
singing for one while. [The young lady bursts into tears.] I shall send all cry- 
babies out of the room directly, you may depend. 

Affecting instance this of the harmony existing in families. 

In Paris, similar scenes are but seldom witnessed. There, musical murders are 
always perpetrated in cold blood. Dillettanti amateurs, of whatever age or sex, 



156 THE DILETTANTE. 

never thrust themselves into society without having seriously and profoundly 
studied their pieces. Nor are they less careful in choosing their victims. Beware 
of all cards of invitation, ending with the intimation that f there will be a little 
music." They are nothing better than ambushes. 

On the whole, we much prefer the ancient custom of after-dinner songs to the 
modern drawing-room assemblages, got together for the purpose of assassinating 
one with the music of the family and neighbourhood. At table, at any rate, there 
were a thousand different ways of avoiding the necessary applause, and of concealing 
one's ennui. A glass raised to the mouth effectively concealed one's laughter, or 
one's gaping fits. It was easy enough to compose one's countenance while peeling 
an apricot or a pear, or in lidgetting with the knives and forks. 

In a regular musical soiree, however, seated in arm-chair, in full view, you are 
exposed, without hope, refuge, or defence, to auricular martyrdom, and to the low- 
ering looks of friends and relations. There are no possible means of avoiding the 
execution . 

We will say the same of the so-called amateur concerts, which have lately in- 
creased and multiplied in a most fearful manner, and which now constitute a perfect 
pest, which we may term the musica-morbus. 

All these frightful abuses are caused by the mania which has seized the Dilettanti 
of the middle classes. There is scarcely to be found a single weak- voiced drawing- 
room minstrel, but who is possessed with an ardent desire to make himself con- 
spicuous ; he must then of necessity be provided with an audience and applauders. 
This feeling has not only gained ground among young and middle-aged people, but 
it has likewise invaded even infancy. For some years past, every family has prided 
itself upon possessing among its members one or more juvenile virtuosos. The 
piano, the violin, the flute, and even the clarionet, have superseded, as juvenile 
amusements, the doll, the hoop, and the foot-ball. The study of the solfa has been 
substituted for Mother Goose's Tales. Pieces of music have been distributed to 
children, instead of pieces of bread and jam. 

This it is which causes us to be surrounded, every step we take, by Malibrans and 
Grisis of ten years old and under, Hertzes in long petticoats, and Paganinis in 
frocks and trousers. These premature musicians are called little prodigies, and 
prodigies they doutless are, — of absurdity though. 

The lower classes have not even been exempted from the Dilettante mania. They 
have now learnt to despise the vulgar gaiety of the songs of the good old time ; 
they are perfectly shocked at the collections printed upon coarse paper, with common 
red covers, which contain the somewhat musty and stale effusions of lane and alley 
melodists. At the Rapee, at the Courtille, and under the pillars of the vegetable 
market, pieces are to be sung. It is not at all an uncommon thing to hear a robust 
Herculean porter pour forth some romantic, melancholy, consumptive ballad, or a 
dirty boy of the Boulevart du Temple, sing " The Sons of the Brave," or " The 
Page in his best Attire is decked." Take, as an example, the ballad of the Sultana, 

" Araby's sweets," 

which is positively quite the rage among the venders of fried soles and red herrings. 
The ambition of distinguishing one's self, more especially as a musician, has brought 



THE DILETTANTE. 157 

to light a crowd of self -called reformers and musical revolutionists. Some three 
thousand years ago, Solomon exclaimed that there was nothing new under the sun : 
one might consequently have been tempted to believe that, after the Haydns, the 
Mozarts, the Beethovens, the Rossinis, &c, that there was nothing new under the 
seven notes of the gamut. Absurdity, Mahomets, and Martin Luthers have recently 
arisen, who pretend to change and overturn all ancient musical opinions and axioms, 
in the same manner that Sganarelle nattered himself to have changed the heart to 
the left side. 

Among these new sectarians we will cite the lyrical Jacotots, who, founding their 
theory upon the axiom that " all is in all," pretend that music is capable of expres- 
sing every thing whatsoever,— an argument, whether it be of a theological, philo- 
sophical, political, didactical, statistical, or ecclesiastical nature, an historical fact, a 
parliamentary debate, a variation of half a centime in the course of the Exchange, 
or a telegraphic dispatch interrupted by the fog. 

In order not to be accused of exaggeration, it will be quite sufficient to call to 
memory the programmes of concerts, in which moral or classical fantasias, and 
symphonies fantastical, poetical, and dramatic, are announced. The authors of 
these compositions not only pretend to express all the effects of physical nature, 
but likewise the most secret emotions and hidden feelings of the heart, the most 
romantic vicissitudes of human destiny, and all by means of crotchets, flats and 
sharps, and cadences. Thus M. Hector B — — has lately published a work with a 
biographical notice in symphony, intitled " Life of an Artist." Among other 
chapters, the explaining pamphlet indicated the description ofa " walk in the open 
plain ,-" nevertheless, the music devoted to the subject might just as accurately have 
described a walk upon the top of the church of St. Sulpice. 

Thus, again, a young pianist, equally remarkable for his great genius and his 
great head of hair, has openly declared his intention of metamorphosing his grand 
pianoforte into a professorship of classical knowledge. According to his system, 
there is not a single note, either flat or diatonic, which does not tend to render 
mankind more virtuous ; and if occasionally he does happen to strike the keys in a 
way to insure their certain destruction, it is only with the view to inculcate his 
moral precepts with additional force. 

Truly there are times when all this din of affected and tiresome music makes 
one almost regret the lyrical era of La Boulangere, Le Clair de la lune, and of La 
Pipe de Tabac. Indeed, many parents calculate upon the effects of the piano-forte, 
or the brilliant cavatina, as an economical means of establishing their daughters. 
Many amateur Duprez, trusting to the comic opera maxim, that when once the ear 
is enchanted, the heart will follow, endeavour to bring out the high C, with the 
sole intention of charming the heart of some rich heiress. O ! where has the Platonic 
love of art for itself alone taken refuge ? 

We have still to mention another class of Dilettanti, who unite the double cha- 
racter of vanity and calculation ; it is that of the sentimental ballad-singer. The 
profession of sentimental ballad-singing has superseded, as a means of parasitical 
subsistence, the old family laureates, the wit, and the anecdote-relater. The ballad- 
singer is now the lion of all private parties : he has his knife and fork laid at a mul- 
titude of dinner tables. He enjoys the privilege of entrance into drawing-rooms, 



158 THE DILETTANTE. 

and even boudoirs, upon all occasions, whether great or small. He is considered 
and treated as a neutral being, of no possible consequence to anybody. The trade 
of sentimental ballad- singing requires, moreover, no other capital, or stock in trade, 
than a black coat nearly new, and a voice rather the worse for wear. 

The sentimental ballad-singer is, generally speaking, a short, thick-set man, with 
large rounded shoulders, fat red cheeks, ornamented with black bushy whiskers, 
and an abdomen protruding like that of a corporal of voltigeurs in the National 
Guard. Nature intended him to be the Atlas of a wholesale grocery business, or 
the proprietor of an extensive waggon- office ; and it is really lamentable to behold 
such a powerful display of muscles and sinews destined merely to sustain simple 
musical notes. 

Nothing in nature is more amusing than to witness the pains that the corpulent 
minstrel takes with himself, in order to impart to his red joyous face a melancholy, 
languishing, or die-away expression, so as to harmonize with the songs which he is 
accustomed to sing. Who could scarcely refrain from laughing outright to hear 
him complaining of his "misery," his "despair," his "journey towards the tomb," 
and the " frail tenure of his existence ?" Hercules with the distaff is not a whit 
more ridiculous than Hercules singing love songs. [ Jj 

Moreover, the ballad- singer possesses one peculiar advantage, viz., that of exer- 
cising a profession which happens to have no slack or dull season : he is never out 
of employ. He despatches the Barcarole at a fair valuation, furnishes the Tyrolienne 
with or without action, sobs a serenade, hums an aria, and not only transacts busi- 
ness in town and country, but is likewise extensively engaged in exportation. In 
the spring, when watering-places begin to fill, he transports all his musical baggage 
either to Spa, Aix, Baden Baden, Vichy, Dieppe, Mont d'Or, Neris, or Plombieres. 

The ballad- singer, however, contrives to return about the fall of the leaf, and 
makes his reappearance in all the concerts which the north wind blows back upon 
Paris. 

Unfortunately, however, after having, year after year, been crowned with roses, 
the troubadour is doomed at last to approach the winter of life. He loses, nearly 
at the same time, his hair and his G. Then he thinks about visiting his " Nor- 
mandy, dear Normandy," or indeed the country in which he first saw the 
light, wherever it may chance to be. There he begins to lay out the produce of his 
industry in the most advantageous manner, becomes one of the principal people in 
the village, perhaps one of the borough authorities, and churchwarden of the parish. 
Every Sunday he stations himself at the reading-desk, and dedicates to the praises 
of the Lord, and those of the rich man of the district, the remains of a voice for- 
merly devoted to the celebration of the Zelmiras or Elviras, and the themes of 
laughter, smiles, and love. 

Thus do the reputations and songs of this transitory world pass away. In seeking 
to conclude our subject in a grave and serious manner, we have happened to hit 
upon the discovery that singing may be employed as a means of attaining the object 
which, it has always been stated, is the most important in life, viz., a knowledge of 
ourselves and others. After an immense variety of arguments and deductions, we 
believe ourselves fully j ustified in laying down this new axiom, that, as in the bird 
tribe the voice corresponds with the plumage, so in the human race the voice cor- 



THE DILETTANTE. 159 

responds with the appearance ; and that any one can say, from hearing a man sing, 
he is a brave fellow, or he is a surly rascal, or he is an idiot, as upon hearing the 
slightest sound of their voice, we proclaim the bird to be a cock, a crow, or a 
canary bird. 

We hasten to add, that the honour of the invention does not exclusively belong to 
us. Before our time, two great geniuses, Shakspeare and Chateaubriand, had already 
applied the subject of music to the study of the human heart. Shakspeare, it is true, 
confined himself to pointing it out as a means of negative condemnation when he 
said, — 

" The man who has no music in his soul 
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils: 
Let no such man be trusted." 

Nevertheless it follows, that if the author of Hamlet had had any hand in the pub- 
lication of the penal code, he would have placed every one who did not like music 
under the inspection of the high police authorities. 

M. Chateaubriand has gone somewhat farther. He has remarked that country- 
men, shepherds, and indeed all those who sing from instinct alone, always prelude 
in a minor key ; and that the air of all pastoral complaints is of the same plaintive 
character. The author of Atala has inferred from this, that " the chord of grief is 
the most natural to the heart of man." Thus, supposing that the great poet had 
suddenly fallen upon our earth from the etherial regions, he would have been able 
to guess immediately that we were subject to death, to pain, to toothache, to melo- 
dramas, to romances run wild, to asphalte and bitumen, to share companies, and to 
National Guard patrols, — and all this from hearing a countryman sing in E flat. 
Verily, genius is a wonderfully fine thing ! 

We have taken the liberty, in some remarks upon singing, to glean after these 
two great men ; and here follow a few of the discoveries which we believe ourselves 
to have made, relative to the concordance which exists between the moral conduct 
of men and their vocal and instrumental habits. 

Whenever you hear one of your fellow- citizens invariably prelude by commencing 
with the middle notes, and breaking off, with a good deal of self-satisfaction, in the 
bass, after the following fashion, — 

" La, la, la ," 



the last notes muttered tremolo, and appearing to issue from his cravat, you may 
say truly, " This man is a grocer — a Boeotian." 

He who, in company, presumes so far as to sing three verses of a ballad, you may 
set down as a person having a strong natural bias towards making himself dull and 
disagreeable. As for the unhappy being who goes beyond that number, and even 
dares to commit the atrocity of singing as many as six, scout him at once as a 
being of a species most detrimental to the peace and quietness of your domestic 
circle, — as a person of an essentially wearying, tiresome, sickening description. 

He who never attempts a tune until it has long become the exclusive property of 
hurdy-gurdies and hand-organs — such, for instance, as a man who would have no 
compunction about singing Ma Normandie, or Le Postilion de Lonjumeau, — old- 
fashioned, rococo fellow, like a bad time-piece, always behind-hand. 



160 THE DILETTANTE. 

In certain cases, the remark ought to be taken in an inverse sense, as sometimes 
it may be said that singing, like words, has been given to mankind to conceal their 
thoughts. Thus, for instance, he who prefers warlike songs, such as En avant, 
marchons contre les canons, or the " Tartar March," — he who, in every verse, is 
performing prodigies of valour, triumphs over the enemies of France, and dies for 
his country, may, after all, be nothing better than a braggart and a coward. To 
take an example of another kind : the ballad which nearly every one must recol- 
lect, 77 pleut, il pleut, bergere, was composed by the old Franciscan, Camille 
Desmoulins, who, by the way, was of anything but a pastoral turn of mind. 

Let us now turn to the choice of instruments, as an indication of disposition. — 
The trumpet, the trombone, the French horn, and the key bugle, — noisy, wild, mad- 
cap fellow, Comic Opera character in the part of a spendthrift nephew, or an officer 
of hussars. 

He who studies the instruments that are necessary to complete the orchestra, and 
plays what is commonly known in theatres as the general-utility parts, such as the 
triangle, the kettle-drums, and the cymbals, — is doubtless a good, kind-hearted, 
straightforward fellow, without affectation of any kind, and always willing to do a 
kindness for a friend. 

The bassoon, — somewhat egotistical disposition. 

The clarionet, — common-place, unpoetical character, with something of a grocer- 
like turn of mind. 

The double bass, — indication of maturity, or rather of decay. Look, indeed, into 
an orchestra, and it is very seldom that we do not see, above the long finger-board 
of this instrument, a head surmounted by a white and venerable -looking wig, and a 
nose which, like that of Father Aubry, is declining towards the grave. 

The choice of the harp denotes a pretty but coquettish woman, seeing that it 
furnishes ample opportunity for the display of a finely- shaped arm, or an elegant 
figure : the pedals, moreover, will show off a pretty little foot to the greatest ad- 
vantage. This instrument is now very generally neglected : we are not, however, 
so ungallant as to infer from this that the perfection of female beauty is more un- 
common than it was formerly, any more than we should believe (although it has 
been so alleged) that the abolition of knee-breeches was a silent acknowledgment 
of the degeneracy of modern calves. 

The lady who usurps the instruments especially intended for men, and plays upon 
the violin, the flute, or the double bass, has generally a strong, masculine cast of 
mind, and incipient moustachios. If she happen to be married, she will completely 
reverse the celebrated 215th article of the Civil Code, relative to conjugal obedience. 

The man, vice versd, who plays either upon the harp or the guitar, might, upon 
urgent necessity, make tapestry- work, and hem pocket-handkerchiefs. 

If our system of observations were to be generally adopted, we should be obliged 
to say to our neighbours, not as formerly, " Tell us whom you frequent," but 
" Tell us what you sing, and we will tell you what you are." 



k 




THE CHEBS-PIiATKB. 




THE CHESS-PLAYER. 



BY MERY. 




IKE an universal alphabet, the Chess-board is known to 
all nations. The Bonze plays at chess in the pagoda 
of Juggernaut ; the palanquin-bearing slave reflects 
how he may best checkmate a pebble king, on a chess- 
board traced on the sands of the Ganges ; the Icelandic 
bishop wiles away the tedious gloom of a polar night, 
with his long- calculated moves on the chess-board, com- 
mencing with that which has become identified with 
the name of Captain Evans : in short, from pole to pole, the sixty-four squares of 
the noble game have solaced the sorrows of the lords of the creation. 

In the middle ages, the Chess-player travelled the world like a knight-errant, 
challenging emperors, kings, and mitred prelates, and acquiring wealth and honours 
by his victories. Boy, the Syracusan, was the most celebrated of these pacific 
warriors. He fought, rook in hand, with the Emperor Charles V., and conquered ; 
hand to hand he fought with Don Juan of Austria ; and that prince conceived so 
extraordinary a liking for both player and game, that he constructed in an apart- 
ment of his palace an immense chess-board with sixty-four squares of black and 
white marble, the men being of real flesh and blood, and moving at the command 
of the two chiefs. At the battle of Lepanto, Boy played a game of chess with Don 
Juan, and conquered the conqueror of the Ottomans. 

Y 



162 THE CHESS-PLAYER. 

At the present day, chess has lost none of its high merit, though he who sways 
the sceptre of the ivory kingdom may no longer enter the lists with sovereigns and 
popes. In Paris, in London, Vienna, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, the most am- 
bitious Chess-players are content with the admiration of their friends, and are often 
unknown beyond the precincts of their clubs. Two great men alone have crossed 
the seas, and their names are known even to the Indian, thus conferring additional 
glory on the French chess-board. The clubs of England, and the circles of Ger- 
many, furnish no rival to M. Deschapelles and M. de Labourdonnais. It has been 
M. Deschapelles' good fortune, in his military life, to revive, in some sort, the exploits 
of Boy, the Syracusan. After the battle of Jena, he entered Berlin with the vic- 
torious army of France, repaired to the amateur Chess-players' circle, and challenged 
the most skilful member, offering his opponent the advantage of the pawn and 
two moves. At this supplementary battle of Jena, the circle of Berlin was beaten 
singly and collectively, and M. Deschapelles ended by offering the rook. The re- 
flective gravity which the Germans ascribe to their exact and mathematical organ- 
ization, was conquered by the prompt and spontaneous calculation of the Parisian 
amateur. 

Fifteen years have now elapsed since M. Deschapelles, the most intricate player 
of his day, retired from the lists. At the time we write M. de Labourdonnais 
sways the sceptre, and reigns absolute monarch. He is about forty-five years 
of age ; everything about him indicates superiority. The developement of his 
forehead is extraordinary ; his eyes, overhung by immense protuberances, seem 
constantly closed to all outward things, and in incessant communion with the 
mind within. Grandson to the illustrious governor of India, immortalized by Ber- 
nardin de St. Pierre, endowed with superior intellect and incredible application, he 
has never been ambitious of higher title than that of the first Chess-player in the 
world ; and this he has achieved. All Europe knows that M. de Labourdonnais 
resides in Paris, at No. 1, Rue de Menars, the splendid hotel of the Chess Club, 
and that he there receives challenges and gives lessons. Strangers every day arrive 
from all parts of France and of Europe ; some, fired with the noble ambition of 
encountering De Labourdonnais with equal arms ; others, with the humility of ac- 
knowledged inferiors, submitting to receive an advantage ; all happy to make the 
acquaintance of, and to cross pawns with, the renowned master. The monarch 
refuses no duel, no proposition : he is ready at all times, and for all opponents. 
At noon, fierce encounters begin in the vast saloon of the Hotel de Menars, heated 
to twenty degrees in the winter, and cool as a grotto in the summer. There may 
be seen the staff of M. de Labourdonnais, composed of the elite of amateurs, who, 
unassisted by their master, can beat all the players of the Westminster Club. As 
soon as M. de Labourdonnais sits down to play a game with an unknown visitor 
from London, St. Petersburg, Vienna, or La Haye, every other game is suspended; 
all present flock to head- quarters ; the monarch and his antagonist are hemmed in ; 
and all eyes are fixed on the unerring finger and thumb that move the victorious 
pawn or man. The interest attached to the amusing scenes is intense and inex- 
haustible ; and although the profane cannot well understand such emotion, it is 
enough, in order to justify this interest in the eyes of those who are not organized 



THE CHESS-PLAYER. 163 

to comprehend it, to say, that the greatest of men have made it their favourite 
passion. 

More successful than Napoleon, M. de Labourdonnais effected a descent in England, 
and conquered the Island. More fortunate in another respect, he had not to 
complain of his adversaries' harsh treatment, the English chess-board having no 
square of injustice. At the period of De Labourdonnais' visit, much was said in 
France of Mr. Macdonald, whose play was, by some, supposed to surpass that of 
the great French master. All the nabobs from Pondicherry and Calcutta, all the 
envoys of Lord William Bentinck, all the explorers of the Indian peninsula, all the 
English from the East and West Indies, protested that Macdonald, of Edinburgh, 
was a more skilful player than the Bramin Fla-hi, of Juggernaut ; and that he would 
easily beat M. Deschapelles, or M. de Labourdonnais. One day, the latter quietly 
crossed the Channel, and repaired to London ; and no sooner was his arrival at 
Jaunay's hotel known at the Westminster Club, than a courteous invitation was 
despatched to his address, and it was not long ere a sharp contest commenced 
between the friendly adversaries. M. de Labourdonnais found, on this occasion, an 
antagonist worthy of him ; the English had not boasted without reason of their 
champion's skill. The struggle that ensued was more warm and spirited than 
London will probably ever witness again. Victory, however, fell to the share of the 
Frenchman, being clearly established by a series of brilliant and decisive moves. 
To the honour of England be it said, that the members of the Westminster Club 
bore this memorable defeat with magnanimity. They gave M. de Labourdonnais a 
splendid dinner at Blackwall ; the toasts, in compliment to the guest, being drunk 
exclusively in claret and champagne. 

Macdonald's death, a few years since, left the British chess-board in a remarkable 
state of inferiority. The last national game, played by correspondence between the 
Clubs of London and Paris, was marked, on the English side, by deplorable errors. 
In 1838, an article in the Talamide, commented upon by Bell's Life, wounded the 
susceptibility of the nation that reckons a Chancellor of the Exchequer* among its 
high dignitaries. That paper noticed M. Deschapelles' supplement to the 
battle of Jena. The noise of the levy of 'bucklers raised in Westminster, in- 
duced M. Deschapelles to emerge from his retreat, and throw down his glove in 
defiance of all England. Protocols were issued previously to the actual outbreak 
of hostilities. Deputies from the Britannic club arrived at the Hotel de Menars, and 
were received with an urbanity quite chivalrous : it was agreed that diplomatic 
notes should be exchanged after a grand dinner at Grignon's. All the elite of Paris 
chess-playing society were invited to the restaurant's of the Passage Vivienne ; the 
assemblage was composed of artists, bankers, peers, deputies, literary men, magis- 
trates, generals, capitalists, physicians, lawyers, and the leading members of the 
Club Menars, M. de Jouy taking the chair. The entertainment was a perfectly 
convivial one ; the English drank toasts to France, and the French, to England ; and 
when the dessert made its appearance, the guests began to grow serious, and the 
cartel was produced as a crowning dish. The discussion that ensued to determine 

* Exchequer (Echiquier) means in French a chess-board.— Ed. 



164 THE CHESS-PLAYER. 

the principles of the war between the two nations, was prolonged till two o'clock in 
the morning, the finesse of the cabinet of St, James's being conspicuous on the 
occasion. At daybreak, the question was not advanced a stage ; and it having been 
found impossible to come to an agreement, the treaty was broken off. M. Descha- 
pelles, who was preparing to make his descent in England, returned to his tent ; 
and the only result of the discussion was the reminiscence of an excellent dinner 
at Grignon's. 

The evenings at the Club M6nars have latterly been very animated, and have 
moreover created a prodigious sensation beyond the precincts of the club-house, on 
account of the marvellous games played by M. de Labourdonnais, with his back 
turned towards the chess-board. Philidor*, the renowned musician and chess- 
player, was the originator of these incredible feats, and no one since his time 
thought of reviving them. M. de Labourdonnais had long pondered on the tra- 
dition, and this laurel of Philidor's frequently disturbed the monarch's sleep. One 
day, he attempted one of these intuitive combinations, and with complete success : 
the next day he played two more games on the same plan, playing out and winning 
both. The report of these games spread like lightning, and caused a great sen- 
sation in the chess-playing world. The doors of the Menars Club were thrown 
open to amateurs and the curious, and M. de Labourdonnais twice again repeated 
his experiment in public. The two games were played in the billiard-room. M. 
de Labourdonnais seated himself in a corner, with his back towards the two chess- 
boards, his face turned to the wall and hidden by his hands. An amateur stood by 
to proclaim aloud the move made by the antagonist. M. de Labourdonnais then 
played in his turn, naming the piece he required to be moved, as if the chess-board 
had been before him. As the game drew to a close, and as the board became cleared of 
taken pieces, the increasing intricacy of the position brought about by anterior 
moves, so difficult to be remembered by the blindfold player, excited the imagination 
of the spectators to such a degree, that they deemed a happy termination of the 
game next to impossible. Let the reader, knowing the wonderful complication 
of the game, add to this the confused hum of voices from all parts of the saloon, 
the stifled murmurs of the by-standers making remarks and expressing their 
astonishment, the opening and shutting of doors, the dull tramp of feet, the 
reiterated noise of coughing, (it was in the depth of winter), the loud and joyful 
exclamations of parties newly entering in ignorance of what was going forward, — in 
a word, all the innumerable trifling incidents, any one of which is usually sufficient 
to distract attention, and imagination becomes almost inadequate to conceive an 
idea of the mental prodigy. Psychological analysis of such a labour is impossible : 
the mind turns from it bewildered. The fact can only be stated, without explanation 
or comment. 

The Chess-player who devotes himself enthusiastically and con amove to his art, 
leads a life full of emotion and charm : he becomes a general, and fights five or six 

* This classical sobriquet was given by Louis XV. to Andre Danican, a native of Dreux, who 
was a member of the Paris Chess Club for thirty years; but, being a royalist, emigrated at the period 
of the French revolution, and died in London, on the 31st of August, 1795, at the age of sixty- 
nine. — Ed. 



THE CHESS-PLAYER. 165 

battles a day without shedding a drop of blood ; he enjoys all the self-gratulation of 
victory, supports defeat with philosophy, revels in the luxury of retaliation and 
vengeance, without sacrificing a single life : he adopts the language of the heroic 
profession ; he says, " Yesterday I fought General Haxo," and smiles with re- 
awakened honour ; or, " General Duchaffaut obtained a victory over me this 
morning," and modestly casts his eyes on the ground. "We frequently hear such 
phrases as the following at the chess-board : — " Yours was an exceedingly awkward 
position;" — " Your attack on the right was feeble ;" — "How unskilfully you en- 
gaged your knights ;" — " The General manoeuvred admirably to save his castle." 
It requires no great stretch of imagination to fancy one's self in a camp on the eve 
of a battle. And the best of this innocent passion is, that it never disgusts by 
satiety ; the intoxicating illusions of to-day recommence to-morrow : to the Chess- 
player, all is vanity apart from the chess-board. No disenchanted Cincinnatus 
rushes back to his plough-tail after these battles ; no philosophical Charles V. turns 
his pensive steps towards the hermitage of St. Just; disgusted with glory and 
mankind, the conqueror does not depart from the battle-field ; the conquered recalls 
his slain to life, and fights the battle o'er again ; the bystanders cheer the loser, and 
congratulate the winner in turn. Six times a-day the Chess-player passes beneath 
triumphal arches, or bows to a conqueror, and the clock in the apartment striking 
the hour, always finds him at his post ; to-day making a stand against the English ; 
to-morrow against the Russian, and the day after against the Holy Alliance, or 
waging civil war against his own country, in actual . contest with a relative or a 
dear friend. Glory, emotion, interest, sorrow, joy, every day, and at all seasons : 
even old age does not wrest him from the gentle fatigues of such campaigns. There 
are no pensioners, no Chelsea, no Greenwich, for the heroes of the chess-board. 
Behold, at the Club Menars, the noble and fresh-looking old Chevalier de Barne- 
ville, the contemporary of Philidor, and of Jean Jacques Rousseau. ; he has played 
in his time with Emile and St. Preux, at the Cafe Procope ; he has received a pawn 
from the great Philidor. In the reign of Louis XV., he commenced his game by the 
classical shepherd move with an encyclopaedist of the Faubourg St. Germain, at 
two o'clock in the afternoon ; he now opens his game at precisely the same hour by 
Captain Evans's gambit with M. de Jouy, De Lacretelle, or Jay for his antagonist : 
that calm and venerable countenance still preserves the same expression of joy after 
a victory, the same happy smile that animated it in the presence of Jean Jacques 
and D'Alembert. What a magnificent and irrefutable living argument in favour of 
chess ! what a powerful stimulant, unknown to the Faculty ! The beautiful serenity 
of mind called into operation at the same hour, and applied to the same object, 
admirably regulates all the functions of the body, and confers on the physical or- 
gans an easy routine of existence that nothing can interrupt. The Chess-player 
has no time to be ill, nor to die, to-day, because he must play the other game 
to-morrow. 

"When kings had nothing else to do but to reign, the chess-board was in high 
estimation at court ; people now-a-days, in affecting a few of the powers of royalty, 
have included the game of chess in their conquests over thrones. Hence the noble 
game has made immense progress ; and, from being purely aristocratic, has become 



166 THE CHESS-PLAYER. 

universal. In England, particularly, where volumes on volumes are published, and, 
if scarcely ever read there, are translated and studied on the continent, hundreds of 
works on chess have been produced, to which the art is considerably indebted for its 
advancement. Formerly, Lolli and the Calabrian were the authorities on the game ; 
these authors who, unfortunately, nourished too soon, like all writers who have not 
the good fortune to be born our contemporaries, have almost fallen into oblivion, 
though their works still tacitly preserve an honourable place in the library, when in 
good condition. Since those venerable professors' time, immense numbers of openings 
of games have been invented, some of which have entirely altered the classical eco- 
nomy of the ancient game : every piece has its gambit, which is called by its name, 
so that Palamede, Tamerlane, Alexander the Great, Parmenio, Sesostris, Con- 
fucius, Mahomet, Selim II., Lusignan, Charlemagne, Renaud de Montauban, Lan- 
celot, Francis I., Charles V., all the great men who claimed such high pretensions 
to the science of the chess-board, would die again of surprise, if they were resus- 
citated to witness Captain Evans's gambit. It is, in truth, somewhat singular 
that Palamede, who played ten consecutive years before the walls of Troy, with 
Agamemnon, Achilles, Diomede, the two Ajaxes, all in the flower of youth, and full 
of imagination and spirits, never hit upon the most insignificant gambit. It was 
Paris, a shepherd on Mount Ida, who originated the shepherd's move, and Sinon, 
who gave the check of the wooden horse to king Priam, did not invent even the 
knight's gambit. Yet what opportunities had not these heroes to advance the 
divine game ! Achilles confined himself to his tent, and played night and day 
at chess with Patroclus; Agamemnon fought little, and played with Nestor. 
With careworn brow, and bowed down by the weight of his conjugal wrongs, 
Menelaus played with Ulysses. On board the thousand vessels at anchor at the 
mouth of the Simo'is, were two thousand Greek captains, who all cultivated the 
science of the chess-board. They fought once a quarter, and, on the morrow of 
the battle, the games recommenced on the lofty poops of the thousand vessels, celsis 
puppibus, or on the beach. It was a vast Chess Club, having for its limits the 
Scamander, the Scaean gates, Cape Sigeum, and Tenedos. It is easy to conceive 
that the kings and chiefs, who were dying of ennui at the siege of Ilium, had re- 
course to a game invented, or at least perfected, by their companion Palamede ; and 
that, overcome by the inexhaustible charm and the endless variety of its combi- 
nations, they passed the heat of the day beneath the ample shade of some of the 
pines of Ida, under their tents or between decks, before a chess-board. The length 
of the siege, which puzzled Voltaire and the Venetian Poco Curante, is thus easily 
accounted for. In the hypothesis here hazarded, a plausible reason is found for the 
protracted retreat of Achilles in his tent during eight years, which, but for the powerful 
assistance of chess, would be utterly unaccountable in a young hero strongly in- 
clined to the stirring excitement of war. Suppress the Homeric tradition of chess, 
and how shall we explain the conduct of Thetis' son, a recluse in a canvass tent six 
feet square ? This reasoning, we repeat, applies to the hitherto enigmatical slowness 
of the siege. All the besieging kings, passionately fond of chess, forgot Ilium and 
the wrongs of the injured Menelaus, insomuch that the bereaved husband of Helen, 
in order to turn the lukewarm kings from the fascinations of check-mate, was 



THE CHESS-PLAYER. 167 

obliged to represent to them, in glowing terms, the injury that necessarily resulted 
to him from the prolonged siege, and the increasing years of the wife ravished from 
his bosom : and when, at the end of the memorable ten years, Menelaus beheld both 
Troy and his wife in ruins, the noble game had been the cause of the mischief. 
The chess-board was the true lance of Achilles. At the instigation of Menelaus, 
Epeus, the constructor {fabricator Epeus), cut out a piece as large as a mountain 
(instar montis) ; Sinon continued to move it by oblique passes, like a rocking-horse, 
and mated king Priam, (mactat ad aras, according to the Virgilian expression) . It 
is unfortunate that the Iliad and iEneid have not fifty verses consecrated to this 
tardy explanation, which, we trust, will satisfy savants and commentators. 

The Caliphs and Sultans of the East have, from time immemorial, been in the 
constant habit of leading an indolent life, divided between the seraglio and the chess- 
board. History records a large number of sultanas and obscure odalisques, who 
played as well as Jean Jacques, who, by the way, whatever he might have thought, 
was not a very proficient player. In the unhappy days when England and Rus- 
sia allowed the monarchs of Asia to live in peace and quietness, ere the Eastern 
Question saw the light, those brilliant foreigners, friends of the shade, and sons of 
the Sun, profoundly meditated on the science of chess, and waged a peaceable 
warfare with their neighbours, the object of strife being a beautiful slave, or a mag- 
nificent elephant. We find the following lines in an unknown poem : — 

" Le grand roi Kosroes perdit sur une case 
La rose d' Ispahan, la perle du Caucase ; 
La belle Dilara, serenite du coeur, 
Qu'un Mat livra soumise au pouvoir du vainqueur." 

Our roues o^ the Regency, who staked their mistresses at lansquenet, were only 
the revivers of ihe ancient customs of the East. It is related that one of Mahomet's 
grandsons, the venerable Orchan, chief of the Ottoman race, was, in 1359, within 
an ace of losing at jhess his favourite Zaloue (sunbeam), in a game with his vizier. 
Just as the sacred hand of the descendant of Mahomet was about to make a fatal 
move, and lay himself open to a decisive check-mate, Zaloue, who was watching the 
game from behind a curtain, uttered a loud scream, which had the effect of arresting 
the ill-advised hand ; Orchan, adds the tradition, avoided the move, and kept his 
favourite. History relates several anecdotes of the chess-board in which ladies 
figure. From the East to Venice is but a step. Flamine Barberigo, a rich Venetian 
senator, played with Erminia, his adored and lovely ward, his furious jealousy 
allowing her no other amusement. The Barberigo palace was Erminia's prison. 
About this time, Boy, the Syracusan, who was travelling the world in search of ad- 
ventures, went to Venice. His renown there, as elsewhere, was great; and 
immediately on his arrival, he was summoned to the Grimani, Manfrini, and Pisani- 
Moreta palaces, where the noble lords of the Republic had so frequently conversed 
about the great master of Don Juan of Austria and Charles V., the illustrious Boy, 
to whom pope Paul III. had offered a cardinal's hat, after sustaining at his hand a 
glorious defeat at chess in open Vatican. The senator Barberigo, the most ancient 
amateur in Venice, immediately threw open his palace to the Labourdonnais of 



168 THE CHESS-PLAYER. 

Syracuse. Boy refused no invitation, and he was particularly enchanted with his 
reception by Barberigo, on account of the lovely Erminia, his captive ward, a young 
lady of brilliant talents, whose education embraced only a knowledge of the game of 
chess, and who sighed in secret for a brighter future. She improved under Boy's 
excellent tutelage, and finally disappeared with the Syracusan, just as he had made 
her perfect in the science. The house of Barberigo never recovered from this 
check. 

A few words on the moral of the game. It is to be wished that the science of 
chess were cultivated in schools and colleges, where we are taught so many ridi- 
culous and tormenting things as children, which are of no use to us when we 
become men. A wonderful mass of practical philosophy lies concealed in the game 
of chess. Human life is a perpetual struggle between will and fate ; and the globe 
is a chess-board on which we move in turn every piece, sometimes at random, in 
fruitless strife with inexorable fortune, which checks us at every game. Hence so 
much mis-play, so many wretchedly ill-assorted alliances, so many impolitic moves ! 
He who has early trained his mind to the material calculations of the chess-board, 
has unconsciously acquired habits of prudent forethought, which will avail him 
beyond the limited horizon of black and white squares. Compelled to guard con- 
stantly against innocuous snares, spread by the little ivory citizens, the Chess-player 
acquires experience in an imaginary world. His life become a long game of chess, 
fools* abounding in all directions, contemplating moves against his safety. Every 
man who accosts him is either a rook or a pawn, and, before making a move, he 
pauses, and considerately weighs his own policy and that of his antagonist. Let it 
not be imagined that this continued tension of the mental faculties degenerates into 
mania, and absorbs the mind to such a degree as to disturb its tranquillity. Chess- 
players are very amiable and pleasant people : M. de Labourdonnais, who is a most 
agreeable companion, plays his game in the midst of joyous sallies and sprightly 
witticisms, which never cause him to overlook an opportunity to checkmate his 
antagonist, nor to make an impolitic move. Thus, a man may by habit create for 
himself a second nature of perpetual variety. The Chess-player does not even feel 
this mechanism of mind, which is unceasingly at work within ; once in motion by a 
first impulse, the springs, nolens volens, obey him unknown to himself. How many 
Chess-players have extricated themselves from a dangerous position in the world 
by skilful calculation, unconscious that their judicious conduct resulted from the 
cultivation of the noble science. May our observations augment the already 
numerous body of patrons of the Chess-board ; at least, there would be less ennui in 
society, and fewer faults of conduct in the world. 

* The third piece, which we call a bishop, is in France called a fool (fou). 




i • M^r *-ysnjsrv^ 



] Q:c'ilf^-X' ■■' : : 




THE GREAT LADY OF 18 3 0. 



BY MADAME STEPHANIE DE LONGUEVILLE. 




r ATISFY by all means your natural curiosity," said 
the Count de Surville to the young Duke d'Olburn, 
who had just arrived in Paris ; " it is indispensable 
for a foreigner : I will be your cicerone, and guide 
you through the Babel we now-a-days distinguish as 
the circle of the Exclusives, and with which you 
desire to become thoroughly acquainted. I will pre- 
sent you at once to the Great Lady, — to Madame 
de Marne ; her husband has been minister ever since 
— yesterday ; and she receives company to-night, for 
the last time at her private residence. It is not yet ten o'clock, — rather early 
for setting off, but we shall arrive before the crowd, and therefore be able to observe 
the better." 

The carriage bearing the Duke and the Count rolled off to the quarter of the 
Nouvelle Athenes. A pell-mell of private carriages, and carriages hired for the 
season, — a medley of cabriolets and hackney-coaches, soon appeared in regular rank 
and file ; a couple of municipal guards, armed cap-a-pee, protected the approaches 
to Madame de Marne's hotel, the exterior of which was illumined by four lamps ; 
the vestibule, dressed out for the fete, was lined with green trees, like the entrance 
to a coffee-house, or a family ground in the cemetery of Pere la Chaise. The 
narrow and compressed staircase was brilliantly lighted, it is true, but by the 
poisonous agency of gas ; and at each tiny folding-door of the confined anteroom 

z 



170 THE GREAT LADY OF 1830. 

stood a servant in fancy livery — invented yesterday, and fabricated by the "midnight 
lamp" of the by-gone night ; — coffee-colour was its hue ; it was trimmed with 
silver and lead buttons, which displayed the letters D. M. 

To reach the Queen of the Fete, the Count and his companion had to cross two 
or three rooms, into which company had already begun to pour. Madame de Marne 
was seated at the upper end of the further chamber, in a gilded arm-chair ; and, 
like a queen amid her court, in the centre of a circle of ladies, covered with gauze 
and flowers, and glittering with diamonds : she had assumed an attitude rather 
constrained than dignified, and uttered her words deliberately and with due consi- 
deration, as preparatory to that diplomatic caution and reserve in keeping with the 
Office for Foreign Affairs, into which she was to make her entrance on the morrow. 
Permitting no glances to escape her but such as spoke protection or disdain, 
Madame de Marne was performing dignity to the best of her skill and power, and 
was arranged in mind and person for the position she was about to occupy before 
the gaze of the world. Of slight proportions, yet perfectly well- formed, fair, with 
a bright complexion, and pretty in spite of the irregularity of her features, she would 
have been a very attractive woman, but for the absurdity and affectation of her pre- 
tensions to magnificence. At sight of the Count, her face shone with a marvellous 
expression of proud satisfaction, and her voice assumed a new and softer cadence, as 
she said to him, with one of her sweetest smiles, "Every one introduced by you, Count, 
must be always most welcome to me ;" then, bending somewhat from the perpendi- 
cular she had been maintaining, she added, " My Lord Duke will, I hope, do me the 
honour of attending at the Palace of the Ministry, where I shall now receive com- 
pany every Wednesday." The Duke had scarcely time to acknowledge this gracious 
invitation, when a crowd of fresh arrivals drew near to make their bows before 
Madame de Marne. At the sound of their plebeian names she had resumed her 
formality, had dismissed from her voice all sweetness of tone, and looked at the 
Duke in a manner which distinctly said, " Forgive this ! it is*an obligation imposed 
on power ! the epidemic of equality has confounded all ranks, and we must receive 
every one !" 

"To what family does Madame de Marne belong?" inquired the Duke of the 
Count, on retiring with him to the corner of the room . 

" Faith, that is a question not readily answered ; the ' Great Ladies' of the present 
day spring from here, there, and every where ; they grow on every hedge : this one 
is, I believe, the daughter of a blacksmith of Berri, who has become a great specu- 
lator, as all enriched plebeians please to call themselves now-a-days." 

" See what it is to be a foreigner," said the blushing pride of the German Duke ; 
"I was completely mistaken in the meaning of the phrase 'Great Lady,' and thought 
high birth indispensable to being one." 

" That is to say, you have taken the term in its old and true signification, — but 
let us move off — we shall be suffocated here ; it is a rout in all its splendour, — 
five hundred people in a space that would not hold half the number unless packed 
in layers, like herrings in a barrel. Ah, Duke, bid your German fastidiousness go 
to sleep," said the Count, laughing at the look of disgust on his companion's face. 
" Come, here is the door of the boudoir — open it, we shall be alone there, and I 
can explain to you what the word ' Great Lady' means in our age — for we can no 



THE GREAT LADY OF 1830. l7l 

longer approach Madame de Marne, and there is no means of observing any thing 
in a crush and medley like this. Understand, then, that the true ' Great Lady,' she 
of the olden time, can no longer exist in France, — or in our era, which they are 
pleased to call the Age of Fashion, but which were more appropriately named that 
of confusion ; deplorable or ridiculous, as the case may be, but always confusion. 
Whirled off by the terrible hurricane of '93, brayed as in a mortar beneath the ruins 
of the old monarchy, the Great Lady of the former time has gone to linger away her 
existence on the soil of emigration, transmitting to her daughters only a few mangled 
wrecks of the magnificent heritage she received from her sires : the other portions of 
this heritage, scattered, divided, subdivided, are become the spoils of Fortune, who 
alone now dispenses them to her favourites of the hour, and this with a sparing hand, 
and in forms altogether mutilated or extravagant. She who bedecks herself with 
the title of Great Lady now-a-days is but a caricature, or the antithesis of the Great 
Lady of the past — a majestic structure, of which all the parts were perfectly in 
unison, and of which every one bore the ineffable stamp of greatness. Examine 
the portraits of these Great Ladies of former times, — in what perfect harmony are 
the features, the air of the head, the general attitude of the whole form, and how 
all concur, as in the immortal statues of the Greek divinities, to indicate that supe- 
riority which is inborn ! It is a union of grandeur with all the Graces, but a 
grandeur which, like the strength of the Farnese Hercules, feels conscious that it 
needs push no one aside, to make its own value known and appreciated — an assem- 
blage of the noblest elements of nature, first carefully selected, then polished and 
repolished by time — a brilliant transfiguration of a mass of glory accumulated 
through ages, inscribed by a hundred generations on all the pages of our history. 
The Great Lady of former times boasted the blood of all those high barons of France, 
whose proud banners had been displayed in many battles by the side of, and 
well-nigh on a level with, the Oriflamme itself. At her birth she had taken her 
position as the last of a race of worthies, on a genealogical tree nobly emblazoned, 
and wrote herself a Crequi, or a Montmorency. Apart from all the aids of that 
pomp of luxury which was her birthright — under the habit of a peasant, as in the 
richest court costume, — in all, and through all, shone forth the Great Lady in whom 
there breathed the pride of blood, the rich beauty of a noble race ! But take from 
her ape of modern times the magic of her wealth — despoil her of her Cashmeres 
and her diamonds, and there will remain of her greatness — nothing f" 

The Count was an old man of a biting spirit ; his tongue was a scourge, and a 
severe one ; he had entered on the favourite chapter of his early reminiscences, and 
the Duke listened without interrupting him. 

" The Great Lady of the present day has no distinctive features, no exclusive 
forms, no type peculiar to herself; she is sometimes pretty, rarely beautiful, but 
generally rich ; for, in this metallic age of ours, har dowry is for the most part 
the pedestal of her greatness. Before the world, she is a stiff and affected actress 
who overplays her part ; but behind the scenes she would be frequently a graceful 
and charming woman, if pride and the intoxication of her prosperity did not 
too often poison her natural qualities. Produced by a lucky hit on 'Change, a re- 
modelling of the ministry, a dissolution of the Chamber, or a creation of Peers, 
without a past, without a future, the Great Lady of our epoch is but a passing 



172 THE GREAT LADY OF 1830. 

meteor, darting wildly across the horizon of a transitory revolution, — an improvisa- 
tion, more or less felicitous, of that blind deity Fortune, — the last produce of political 
intrigue. A little town-bred dame, mounted on the high stilts of her pride, believes 
that she rules all things from that tottering elevation, and imagines herself to be 
really what she attempts to be, when she has somewhat altered her name, by 
slipping into it, if it be not too hopelessly vulgar, the aristocratic ' De,' or by 
adding to it that of her birth-place : nay, she even suppresses it altogether, forget- 
ting to ask leave from the Keeper of the Seals, to take simply that of the village 
near her country-house. One must have seen the Great Lady of former times to 
comprehend in all its force the absurdity of her who now affects to bear the name. 
All that you see here in its gala-dress, in its pomp, — these paltry chambers, of which 
the ceiling threatens to brush your head, and in which three hundred people are 
suffocating — all these men dressed as for a funeral, — those half-dozen servants in the 
ante-room, these hired coaches at the gate — can all this have the slightest relation 
to the princely cortege that surrounded the Great Lady of by-gone times — the 
numberless domestics, — the splendid liveries, — the blazoned carriages, — the titled, 
jewelled, and perfumed crowd, — those palaces so vast, so resplendent with hereditary 
riches, — those immense saloons in which the gilded and silky waves of the splendid 
court-dresses had space to develop themselves majestically ! The proportions of the 
robes, like those of the palaces and the fortunes, have completely changed. Splen- 
dour and greatness have disappeared from our costumes ; the form and manner of 
the Great Lady in the olden times belonged only to herself — suited her alone : the 
material had been woven for none besides. The dress of our present Great Lady 
differs in no manner from that of other women : — it is suited to all shapes ; indi- 
vidual taste and gracefulness can alone give it an air of distinction. 

"To be just, however, we must admit, that the Great Lady of the present day has 
a more cultivated mind than had her prototype of by-gone ages, whose education 
confined her intellect, for the most part, to the frivolous though spirited gossiping of 
the ' Grands Appartements de Versailles.' Our Lady, indeed, sometimes aims 
at science — but then, becoming what the English call a ' Blue -stocking,' and not 
choosing to seem unacquainted with any of its distinctions, however elevated, how- 
ever varied, she thinks proper to descant upon all. She prates of physics and 
politics, of geology and of chemistry, of medicine and of astronomy, with the 
authority of a Franklin or a Montesquieu, a Cuvier or a Lavoisier, a Broussais or 
an Arago, and this in such a sort as might half induce a belief in the reality of her 
erudition, were it not that one finds in the reviews and journals she has read in the 
morning, all the scientific trappings with which she bedizens herself at night. The 
Great Lady of the old monarchy saw the fine arts labour for the embellishment of 
her gilded life, without being able to appreciate their products, except through that 
instinctive perception by which all are made aware of the presence of the beautiful. 
The Lady of the present day adds to the perception, the comprehension : she 
admires with discernment, nay, she sometimes devotes a portion of her time in good 
earnest to painting, to music, to poetry, and might often claim the title of Artist, in 
its least restrictive sense. 

" In the Lady of our day, the pride of wealth takes the place of that pride in her 
illustrious origin which was the unalienable portion of the Lady of past times. ' Is 



THE GREAT LADY OF 1830. 173 

he of noble race ? — under what circumstances did his ancestors distinguish them- 
selves ? ' — were the first questions to him who solicited the honour of presenting to 
her a stranger. 

" ' Is he rich ?' demands the Lady of the present day, under similar circumstances. 
Gold is the supreme idol of the hour — gold is the passport for all, and to all — gold 
is the dispenser of merit. The Great Lady of our day owes to this her most polite 
attentions — her most gracious smiles. It is frequently by the medium of this alone 
that she finds herself in the first rank. Thus it is perfectly just in her to proportion 
the consideration she accords to the fortune of those who surround her. It is true 
that you might perceive, on your entrance, how high a degree of satisfaction her 
vanity receives, when historical names come to ornament her drawing-rooms ; but 
be certain that in general her most profound sympathies will always be the achieve- 
ment of the millionaire. In her conversation, you will frequently hear the arith- 
metical figures resounding : it is the force of blood ! ' He has so many thousands 
a year — so much landed, so much funded property — manufactures to such an ex- 
tent — he is a man of unlimited credit — he has an excellent house : you will find 
there everything best worth looking at in Paris.' Is her admiration drawn to 
handsome furniture, rich jewels, or an elegant equipage? — she fails not to enumerate, 
among the reasons for her approval, the high price of the object admired. The Great 
Lady of former times never thought of the numerical value of things ; she did not 
know how to reckon ; money was altogether unknown to her ; she never soiled her 
hands with its contact ; it was the business of her stewards to estimate and pay for 
all those inventions to which luxury gave existence for her alone. If a certain in- 
convenience was attached to this careless ignorance of the ' circulating medium,' 
it was redeemed by incontestable advantages. Her liberality enriched all who ap- 
proached her ; and gave to all her actions, even to her wildest squanderings, a cha- 
racter of greatness to which we have now nothing analogous. 

" Mean in everything, the Great Lady of the present time, if prodigal, knows how 
to exhaust her purse only by the ceaseless renewal of those myriad nothings which 
Fashion is daily creating for her votaries. If, on the contrary, a spirit of order dis- 
tinguish her, you will perceive it, in the arrangement of her household, only by 
that parsimony inherent with the city traditions of her family. Pride, vanity, and 
meanness — these make up the Great Lady of the present day — these make up the 
epoch. It would seem that each epoch has its Great Lady, in whom it is epitomized 
between our own and that of the old monarchy. France has seen two, but on these 
I will but briefly touch. The one — that of the Directory and Consulate — reminded 
one of Aspasia and Phryne. She had their graces and beauty, — their wit and 
manners ; she put an end to the Reign of Terror, tore France from the revolutionary 
saturnalia, and substituted those brilliant and voluptuous fetes of which the Raincy 
was one of the theatres, and to which resorted the Brutus of the eve, to prepare 
himself for that metamorphosis that was to make him on the morrow the courtier 
of a despot. The other — that into which her forerunner, the Aspasia, naturally 
transformed herself — was the Great Lady of the Empire ; and she died with the 
setting of that sun of which she was but a ray. This last showed herself to be an 
assemblage of contrarieties, but the daughter of victory. She displayed, up to a 
certain point, the mother's fascinating proportions ; and if at times the manners of 



174 THE GREAT LADY OF 1830. 

the guard-house crept out in her deportment, at least her title, and the ermine of 
her mantle, were the well-earned rewards of a thousand brilliant actions performed 
in every battle-field, over which the eagle had waved its triumphant wing. 

" The Great Lady of the present day is very skilful in arranging the intonations 
of her voice, as you may have remarked in Madame de Marne. She swells or dimi- 
nishes its volume according to the quality of the person to whom she addresses 
herself; but, thanks to the pretensions of her pride, it is never regulated by pro- 
priety. Her tone is always false, so that she produces the effect of an instrument 
out of tune; she is never natural, and overwhelms one with the weight of her 
studied politeness, so unlike to the perfect good taste, the simple and true courtesy, 
which distinguished the Great Lady of by-gone days. She rarely knows how to be 
familiar, without degenerating into rudeness ; arrogant and disdainful towards her 
inferiors, she presses on them, almost invariably, with the whole weight of her con- 
sequence ; her susceptibilities are excessive ; a nothing frightens her ; and, like a 
sentinel before a town newly conquered, she is ever ready to take alarm at the 
notion that one desires to contest her position, or proposes to deny her superiority ; 
she prepares herself to maintain the one, and support the other, by a double portion 
of formality in her manners, and haughtiness in her tone. 

"With the Great Lady of former times, have disappeared those immense domains, 
those imposing castles, whose high and antique towers had the power to protect 
the hamlets scattered around them. With them are extinct all those seignorial 
rights, the conquest of their ancestors, the price of their blood, the brightest gems 
in their coronets. 

" In her little villa, built yesterday, wherein all is squeezed into accordance with 
her little greatness, the Great Lady of the present day labours vainly to resuscitate 
the noble castellane of past ages : she plumes herself with high pretension ; her nar- 
row and plebeian hospitality is a sort of foil — of contrast to the princely welcome 
that awaited all who entered the dwelling of the true Great Lady. 

" On her birthday, she sometimes condescends to give the inhabitants of the 
neighbouring village a dance before the gates of her park ; and, in the excess of her 
munificence, she adds to this favour that of distributing a few barrels of wretched 
wine, well watered beforehand. 

" Where the Great Lady of the past ages gave alms silently, and with abundance, 
that of the present day deals out ostentatiously her stinted dole, and thus lessens 
the misery of the indigent but for an hour. But, on the other hand — and one owes 
her the justice of proclaiming it — if, in her charities, she is too economical of her 
purse, at least it must be acknowledged that she is prodigal of herself. Indefati- 
gable in dancing for some, in singing for others, she beams forth lady patroness of 
all the fetes, balls, and concerts, organized for the benefit of the poor, the widow, 
the orphan, and the refugee, whom the generous sympathies of the public pity feel 
it necessary to relieve ; nay, pushing her charity farther still, — and here we have 
the sublime of devotion, — during certain periodical paroxysms in favour of indi- 
gence, and by way of helping it all the better, the Great Lady imposes on herself 
the whole duty of shopkeeping. In its name, and in extempore bazaars, does she 
make herself a trinketer ! — yes, a trinketer ; and, with a courage altogether her 
own, she pursues all her acquaintances, whether rich or not ; compels them to pay, 



THE GREAT LADY OF 1830. 175 

for the worthless trifles spread out before her, their weight in gold ; forces upon 
them that sort of tax for the poor which she tells them compassionate souls 
should impose on themselves, and to which she contributes personally only by cer- 
tain screens, pin-cushions, and pen- wipers, the work of her hands, and of which 
Harpagon himself, had she been his daughter, would have permitted her to incur 
the expense with all his heart. Nevertheless, and probably because she places her- 
self before the semblance of a counter, in a well- warmed and comfortable room, this 
Great Lady persuades herself she is giving to the world an edifying example of un- 
paralleled benevolence. Who, indeed, shall affirm — for the field of pride is illimit- 
able as the plains of ether — if, at such moments, she does not go the length of 
imagining that she displays on her brow the halo of divine charity with which that 
of St. Vincent de Paul was resplendent, when, having given his last cloak, his last 
farthing, to the poor, he voluntarily, and to relieve the captive from his chain, con- 
demned himself to the coarse and humiliating labour of the galleys ? 

" Faith has no longer its heavenly influence. The Voltairian scepticism 
has destroyed it ; for, like the simoon — that pestilential wind of the desert, 
whose fatal breath dries up, withers, and annihilates whatever meets it — this 
audacious school has respected nothing, — has destroyed all. Under the pretence 
of desiring only to destroy ignorance, superstition, fanaticism, and hypocrisy, it has 
extinguished in our souls that religion which is the pure and only source of the 
most sublime inspirations ; and has replaced it only by torturing doubts, or by a 
cold materialism which taints humanity. 

" The Great Lady, however, induced by caprice, fashion, or to give herself the air 
of a person well-born, affects to observe certain ordinances of the church. She has 
her prayer-book clasped with gold, and her seat reserved ; on state occasions, she 
carries the plate at charity sermons ; and is godmother to church-bells. In the 
magnificence of her devout ardour, she gives a plaster Virgin, an altar curtain of 
embroidered net, or a pinchbeck cross, to the church of the village near her country- 
house, with a dinner now and then to the curate. 

" The Great Lady always perfumes herself, as much as possible, with aristocratic 
opinions. No one fulminates anathemas more loudly than this ungrateful one against 
the revolutions that have made her what she is. If you comprehended Madame 
de Marne when those plebeian names whose wealth did not gild their obscurity 
came sounding in her ears, you would feel how much the Great Lady was suffering at 
the confusion of ranks, — how she was grieving at the necessity in which Power finds 
itself, now-a-days, of making its saloons a sort of olla podrida. 

" The Great Lady of our times is not restricted, more than other women, as to 
her leisure. There is no charge at court for her, — no ' tabouret,' — no card-table of 
the Queen ; but, on the other hand, the citizen royalty gives her certain balls, which 
it takes care to embellish with all the attractions of a family meeting, especially in- 
viting the six thousand ' Eminences' of the Commercial Directory. 

■' Love, gallantry, all is dead in France. Its women have no longer the privilege of 
occupying the place next after business in the thoughts of men : they are now only 
a kind of interlude to their pleasures, — a sort of breathing-time between horse-races 
in the Bois de Boulogne, and orgies at the Cafe de Paris. Surrounded by fewer 
seductions than the Great Lady of the past, is the one who has taken her name 



176 



THE GREAT LADY OF 1830. 



more faithful to her conjugal duties ? I doubt it greatly; but the age has no charge 
to urge against her. She observes its precepts, she preserves appearances, she is 
virtuous, — after its fashion. After all, a mystery in her attachments, is, to the 
Great Lady of the present day, a necessity of her position, — a condition of her being, 
or not being. A plant brought but as yesterday to the soil on which she decorates 
herself with fading flowers, she feels that she would have no power to resist the 
breath of scandal, had she the imprudence to lay herself open to it : she knows 
that the slightest breath would overwhelm and cast her back into her original 
nothingness." 

As the Count was uttering these last words, a tall young man, with a pale oval 
face, and a chin buried in the beard of the middle ages, seemed to glide secretly into 
the boudoir ; but withdrew in haste, on seeing the Count and his companion. 

" Ino longer doubt," said the former, with a malicious smile. " Yes, the Great 
Lady has her hours of reception with closed doors. The orchestra is playing its 
last notes. The crowd is much thinner. Let us hasten to approach Madame 
de Marne, if you wish for another insight into the character of the Great Lady." 

" Who is that man balancing himself in the middle of the floor, like a swan in its 
basin of marble, and to whom the surrounding group is listening so attentively ? " 

"He is the son of a retired schoolmaster. Previous to 1830, he was a petty 
journalist," replied the Count de Surville to the Duke d'Olburn. " He is now 
the representative and defender of the interests of France in all the Courts of 
Europe — in all the countries of the world. He is the husband of the ' Great Lady,' 
Monsieur de Marne, the minister of yesterday." 





THE HOSPITAL ATTENDANT. 



BY P. BERNARD. 



Ubi non esfmulier, ingemiscit eeger. 

C'est Cffiur de la femme qui approche de plus pres le mortel aux 
prises avec la douleur ; c'est sa main qui le touche avec plus de 
douceur.— -Pkkcy it Laurent. 

ENTURE to look into that long narrow room, bordered 
by iron bedsteads, with scanty but clean white curtains, 
\ and watch that little man who glides rather than 
walks, in an old pair of slippers, along the polished 
floor. He appears, then disappears ; he is here one 
moment, and gone the next. Observe, however, that 
he is perambulating from one bedside to another, to 
inquire if there is anything new, and to wish good 

morrow. Do you know to whom ? To mere 

numbers ; for the man of whom we are speaking has no fellow-beings in the place 
where we find him : there, the world is composed only of himself, and Numbers One, 
Two, Three, Four, &c. 

Where are we, then ? We are at a gathering-point, where are congregated infirm 
artizans, honest tradesmen, too-confiding capitalists, the faithful adherents of a fallen 
dynasty, victims of disinterested friendship, men of unshaken virtue, and too diffi- 
dent talents; we are where professed philanthropists never need a refuge; — we are in 
an hospital. 

A A 




178 



THE HOSPITAL ATTENDANT. 



Now let us speak of the man we have just been observing. Is it from taste, from 
necessity, or from a self-imposed penance, that his life is consecrated to disease and 
infection ? De we behold in him some generous disciple of the good Mere Agnes, 
or of Gerard de Provence ; some knight-hospitalier of St. John, of the Sepulchre, of 
Mount Carmel, or of St. Lazarus ? No ; for he is not equipped at once to combat 
and to succour — to tend the sick in the hospital, and to protect the wounded on the 
battle-field. However military manners and customs may now-a-days be softened, 
the demeanour and the occupation of this personage in no degree assimilate to the 
heroic ; and, alas ! in these degenerate days, knights-errant have disappeared from 
the earth. 

Or is he rather one of the fraternity of St. Jean de Dieu, originally from Italy, 
whom Catherine de Medicis attempted to naturalize in France ? We cannot think 
so, when we hear him swear at yonder poor patient who has concentrated all his re- 
maining strength in an effort to call him somewhat too impatiently. 

Examine him a little more closely. Where could one find a more important air 
beneath a yellowish cotton night-cap, unless perchance in the refreshment-room 
of a cheap restaurant ? On his arm he wears a napkin that was once white, 
and never hero bore his honours with more dignity and assurance; an apron 
with rounded corners is tied round his waist, under his woollen jacket ; 
one or two other appendages to his costume need not be described, as (apothe- 
caries having long since disappeared) that man can be no other than the Hospital 
Attendant. 

The Attendant's name is invariably Jean : it is so easily pronounced ! Patients at 
the point of dissolution may contrive to utter Jean ! — Four letters, as in the inter- 
jections, Hola ! Oheh ! and without the difficult letter h. Of all names, Jean is 
the one that a humane government ought to impose by edict on all children in- 
tended for porters, valets, or any department of servitude. Let us except grooms, 
their masters always having the resource to call them Tom. 

Jean's situation is forced upon him either by poverty, ignorance, or by greedi- 
ness. Start not at this last word, so little in accordance with general notions of 
hospital rules. Passions are indulged where they can, and how they can ; and the 
terms hospital and spare diet are not necessarily synonymes. Ask the Attendant, if the 
quantity, or half, or a quarter of the quantity of fresh eggs, &c, ordered morning and 
evening in the prescription-book, are not substantial realities, which, to save the 
patients from over- diet, he suffers to weigh sometimes very heavily on his own 
stomach. Nor are rhubarb and castor- oil the only remedies administered in an 
hospital : cordials are not absolutely chimerical, nor is brandy completely imaginary ; 
and the Attendant's propensities on this subject are so well known, that it is not 
unfrequently found expedient to alter the colour and taste of the brandy intended 
for the patients' use, in order to save him from the temptation. " Calumny!" cry 
the honourables of the profession ; and calumny it may be, but there is undoubtedly 
some truth at the bottom of it ; and, after all, as certain great criminals have said, 
" No man is perfect." 

Admitted originally into the hospital as a patient, the Attendant sometimes owes 
his situation to a difficult operation successfully performed upon him. He is re- 



THE HOSPITAL ATTENDANT. 1 79 

tained as a specimen of skilful dissection experimented on a living subject, of whom, 
for the interest and honour of science, the surgeons are unwilling to lose sight; 
and accordingly they offer him the appointment of Attendant, to keep him at 
the hospital, from the same motive that calves with two heads are put into glass- 
cases, and taenia preserved in spirits of wine. Alas ! it is this same spirit that 
destroys the Attendant. All things have changed places; and, in this case, Jean is 
the vessel. 

Jean is a willing and unceasing gossip. Leaning upon his broom — one of the 
classical attributes of his profession — he will relate to you, whether you are willing 
to hear him or not, all he knows, which is a great deal, for he knows everything. 
He has taken his ideas of the Monarchy from an ex- servitor of his Majesty 
Louis XVI., who died in No. 93 ; of the Republic, from the reminiscences 
of the porter of a Girondin; and the traditions of the Empire have been transmitted 
to him by the many veteran soldiers who have at different times started for a real 
place of rest from the hospital, or perhaps through the feuilletons of the Siecle. What 
he knows about poetry, he learnt from insane young men, who, between the ages of 
eighteen and twenty-five, died reciting, to their incurably deaf neighbours, verses 
which their friends could never read, and the public never appreciate. His notions 
on literature have been drawn from ruined publishers ; on medicine, from all the 
doctors who have successively appeared, or been excluded, since his entrance into 
the hospital; and on philosophy, from countless pauper-patients. 

Every good quality is attended by its own peculiar disadvantage. Jean, being a 
great talker, cannot fail to be a politician ; nay, he may pronounce himself the best- 
informed man in all France of what was published in yesterday's papers. Jean 
reads on the sly all the newspapers of the preceding day ; and we appeal to the 
reader to recal to his remembrance his school -days, and then to say whether or not 
his secret studies did not profit him more than all the rest. Jean thus peruses 
gratis the Journal des Debats of the Directors, the Temps of the Doctor, the 
Quotidienne of the Superintendant, and the National of the In-door Pupil. Jean's 
faith in all prints of the most opposite politics was something sacred, until one fatal 
day he discovered in them a serious departure from truth, committed by one, and 
faithfully copied by the rest. The facts were these : — A man having received three 
stabs from the dear hand of his mistress, was borne to the hospital. Jean 
was present at the dressing of his wounds : they were not mortal, though the 
operation he was compelled to undergo was, which is quite another thing. 
The man was operated upon, and died ; and the next day it was stated that he had 
fallen a victim to the blows of his fair assassin. Jean maintains that he died 
from the effects of the operation ; and since that time he rather mistrusts both 
the good and the bad that are published touching the ministry, and other state 
matters. 

His business is to tighten a bandage, to adjust a plaster, and to put on leeches ; 
but Jean lounges with delight in the wards, as others lounge on the quays and in the 
sun : he goes from pleurisy to consumption, retailing the news ; from fever to rheu- 
matism, from a blister to a broken limb, as the butterfly flutters from the lily to the 
rose, from the rose to the pink. 



180 



THE HOSPITAL ATTENDANT. 




Jean's person, not generally gigantic, we have already informed the reader is 

terminated by a cotton night- cap, which he 
has the good taste not to stick on one side, but 
to wear straight, and slouched almost below 
his eyebrows. "Without being a coward, Jean's 
courage is not unimpregnable, and therefore 
plays he not the swaggerer amongst the pa- 
tients. His fashion of wearing his cap savours 
somewhat of the restaurant ; and, in fact, Jean 
is not a total stranger to the art of restoring 
life. Occasionally he caters for those patients 
whom the Doctor has strictly dieted ; and of 
course this favour is always subject to a con- 
tribution, which rises in proportion to the scar- 
city of the regimen prescribed. The number 
who is allowed half the usual portion, and is 
desirous of two-thirds, is taxed at a reasonable 
price, — that is to say, he pays as pays a Christian to a Jew, or as the heir of a rich 
family to the usurer ; but the price rises at once, in a most unequal proportion, for 
the poor patient, who, not being allowed to take anything, wishes for a quarter of 
the general allowance ; and by him the bone of a chicken, already touched by dying 
lips, is paid as if it came straight from the shop. But wisdom rather than avarice 
presides at these assessments ; and it is only just that he who endangers his life 
should pay rather dearly for his temerity. 

But soft! take off your hat. — Here is the hero, the pattern of Attendants, 
coming forward. Obeyed by his equals, esteemed by his superiors, this is the 
Attendant par excellence, — the Attendant beyond all price. Perhaps you have 
visited the man who immerses himself in water without getting wet, or him who 
goes through fire without being burnt, — the impenetrable and incombustible. The 
man whom I have just presented to you, more wonderful than all this, comes in 
contact with every disease known, without catching any. Can you guess how he 
has arrived at this grand result ? The means are in everybody's power. Jean has 
had the hospital fever, — that is to say, the fever that includes all others, the fever of 
fevers, that which preserves you from every other malady, either by killing you out- 
right, or by rendering you invulnerable. The hospital fever is the Attendants' 
hardest trial, — their tour of the world : few survive it, but those few never have it 
again. Hence, such a Jean as this is rare and invaluable. The typhus and the 
cholera pass by him like a zephyr over the surface of a summer sea ; and when at 
last he dies, it is only because everything human must have an end. 

The Sister of Charity and the Attendant are the two great powers of the hospital, 
dividing their empire as such things are generally divided, — that is, very unequally. 
The Sister is the Queen, the Attendant only her Lord Chamberlain, whose authority 
depends upon the degree of favour he enjoys in his sovereign's presence. Thus 
the pious Attendant is the favourite, next (be it understood) to the hypocritical 
Attendant. 



THE HOSPITAL ATTENDANT. ] 81 

We have called them great powers, and our expression will be found quite just, 
when the reader is made acquainted with their arrangements, and the little diplo- 
matic presents that cement the harmony and perfect mutual understanding that 
subsist between them. 

The important negotiations that take place are generally relative to the articles 
of general consumption, such as eggs, milk, wine, all delicate viands liable to spoil, 
and requiring careful management. The problem that these two worthies have 
often to solve in common is this : — Without changing anything of the quality or 
quantity of the articles prescribed, to give their portion to all those who have the 
right and some others besides. As to the wine, one might without fanaticism sup- 
pose, that some part of the secret of the wedding-feast at Cana has been transmitted 
to the truly devout ; at all events, this idea is not the most unhristian. This is a 
case for the reader's conscience, and, honi soit qui mal y pense, though the problem 
is solved every day to general satisfaction. 

The Sister represents religion; the Attendant, philosophy, and recklessness. 
What is a wound, in the eyes of an Attendant ? — a quarter or half a pound of 
mangled flesh. The blood spilt is much less precious than wine ; and he regards 
a corpse merely as something that will make room for a new patient, or leave a 
number vacant, and which is to be covered with a sheet, and taken to the dissecting- 
room — that is all. 

Poets exclaim, with parade and without truth, 

" Que j'en ai vu mourir !" 

WTien Jean is in the humour, he contents himself with adding, but without any 
literary pretension, " And I, then ?" In fact, Jean and death are very old acquaint- 
ances, and scarcely a day passes that they do not do something one for the other. 
Jean, either out of stupid complaisance, or from inattention, lets a soul depart which 
it was still possible to detain an instant longer ; death often adding to the Atten- 
dant's worldly possessions an old coat, a snuff-box, or a pipe. Touching exchange ! 
Fearful reciprocity ! 

There are days when the duties of Jean's office assume an imposing and solemn 
character ; when, for instance, he has to conduct and reconduct some poor wounded 
creature to and from the operating room ; some of the patients sit up in bed to see 
him ; others, on foot, wearing their grey caps, crowd round him. Jean travels to 
and fro from the patient's bed to the room, preparing one and the other, and one for 
the other. The Attendant supports the pale and trembling sufferer, and as they 
pass, smilingly demonstrates to him that the operation he is about to undergo is not 
a painful one ; and in his humanity goes so far as to offer to pledge his honour in 
proof of what he advances. Those of the spectators who have gone the same way, 
and fortunately returned — rari nantes — also throw in their words of encouragement, 
" Number so-and-so," cries one, " don't be afraid ; they cut off my leg very well." 
" Oh !" cries another, " keep up your spirits ; they amputated my arm to admira- 
tion." Each one proffers what he has lost to the unhappy wretch who is about to 
be deprived of a part of himself. Jean is present at the operation, takes note of the 



182 



THE HOSPITAL ATTENDANT. 




cries and groans, and according to these, classes his patient on his list and ranks 

him in his esteem. With indignation and as- 
tonishment Jean remarks, that women gene- 
rally support the most terrible operations, 
without allowing a single word to escape 
them. " Women, who talk so readily about 
nothing," adds he. Jean will only see in this, 
a provoking spirit of contradiction on their 
part. » On this subject Jean shows himself 
neither just nor gallant. 

How often has Jean been the acting lawyer 
for the will of the lover who, dying, had no- 
thing to bequeath but a ring and a lock of hair 
to the woman for whom in the delirium of 
youth, love, and fever, he had dreamed flowers, 
diamonds, and wealth inexhaustible ! What 
touching and what terrible secrets have been 
confided to him ! Disclosures, perhaps, of an exalted mind condemned in some 
poor body, in a wretched condition, to expiate here below the profanation of a 
former existence, which, seeing its deliverance at hand, was bright with hope. . . . 
and these hopes were reputed the ravings of insanity. 

In a hospital, everything is counted a disease, or one of the infirmities to which 
humanity is subject ; secrets are there learnt of the poor and the gifted, who, at their 
last hour, no longer refuse themselves the luxury of tears, and of revealing their 
innermost thoughts, — secrets of the beggar, who, having left a few farthings in the 
straw of his garret, knows too well the value of money not to wish them to profit 
some one, — secrets of the honest labourer, who bitterly regrets his sickly wife and 
seven children, left at home without fuel and without bread ! What confession of 
heroic devotedness, unnatural crimes, tears of religious faith, outpourings of long- 
buried and heart-consuming passion, wailing, and gnashing of teeth ! 

How much more does the man now engaging our attention know of mankind, 
than all the philosophers put together ; how much more has he seen with his own 
eyes, than all the poets have ever even imagined ! and, oh ! sublime of the science, 
Jean is unaware that he knows anything. 

He beholds patients succeed patients, with the same incurable and profound in- 
difference that courtiers look at political revolutions : his duties are the same, 
whoever they may be, and this is the only idea he has of constancy, and the only 
meaning conveyed to his mind by the word eternity. When you have become one 
of the have-beens, and are no longer sensible of the obligation, Jean has yet some- 
thing to do for you : he takes you down to the dead-room ; deposits you on the 
flag-stones, lights a funeral lamp, and fastens to your arm a bell-rope, in case — by 
no means an impossible one — of your being only in a trance. Jean has no objection 
to believe you living, but you must just ring the bell ; without this precaution you 
will be handed over, on the morrow, to the attendant of the dissecting-room, who 
will come, with his pipe in his mouth, to claim his subject. The day after your death, 



THE HOSPITAL ATTENDANT. 183 

you cease to be a corpse, and become a subject ; so are those called who, still useful 
after death, serve for anatomical investigation. — Subjects ! 

What a royalty ! 

But it is a royalty, harassed and tormented more than would at first thought 
be supposed. Heads, legs, and arms, are sometimes most unruly, and without 
galvanism having any thing to do with the case, the anatomist does not always find 
them where they were left. This phenomenon is easily explained, the medical 
students stealing one another's subjects with no more scruples than are shown by 
authors in plagiarisms. 

To return to our Attendant. He is rarely married, in general not having a suffi- 
ciently high idea of the human species to wish to perpetuate it. He however makes 
no vow of celibacy. He is unwilling to bind himself to any thing, and accordingly 
sometimes sacrifices himself. When he has a family, this is the way it is dis- 
tributed. 

His mother is at the Hospital for Incurables. 

His wife is at the Lying-in Hospital. 

His eldest child is at the Enfant Jesus. 

And, lastly, he has an uncle, who is the pride and glory of all the family, a porter 
in a country hospital. 

The Attendant is not, as might at first sight be thought, the male of the Nurse : 
they belong one and the other to a very different race. The nurse has always much 
pretension ; she is a widow who has seen better days ; she lived much at her ease 
in the lifetime of her husband, who was a remarkably handsome man, and quite the 
gentleman. Her misfortunes have been numerous. 

Save the exceptions indicated above, the Attendant commonly is descended, with- 
out shame as without vanity, from unknown and nameless parents. The remini- 
scences of his childhood recal only games of every kind, and clambering over 
ramparts and parapets to see criminals guillotined ; he believes he was born in 
Burgundy, and he grew up, as grow mushrooms and nettles. Now the Nurse is 
round and fat, and rolls along rather than walks ; the Attendant is thin and withered. 
Patients must always be inclined to say to him, " Get cured yourself." The 
Nurse's greediness is always confined to little dainties and sweet things ; but the 
Attendant's voracity, when it pleases him to display the extent of his digestive 
power, attacks everything. We have already spoken of his gluttony, which is 
merely a defect of character ; but, alas ! his extraordinary capability developes this 
defect in a manner almost superhuman. Attendants have been seen to swallow the 
portions of a whole ward, and their voracity has been known to go far beyond 
what one would suppose the limits of the possible. Jean has an appetite worthy 
of the miasma which surrounds and excites him. 

We perceive with regret that hitherto we have spoken very ill of the Attendant ; 
but we must not bear malice : to slander is a disease. We hasten to assert that 
the Attendant often renders signal services to suffering humanity, and when in- 
clined to be sober, intelligent, and careful, he can do much towards the mitigation 
and even the cure of certain diseases. Decidedly, I am inclined to retract some 
part of the ill I have said of my hero. 



184 THE HOSPITAL ATTENDANT. 

Talking of heroes, it is but right to mention that the military Attendant differs 
entirely from the civil. In the first place, the former wears an uniform, and every- 
body knows the serious modification that this simple circumstance of itself makes 
in an individual. The elements of his affecting history might perhaps be learnt of 
the Pensioners at the Invalides, and a melancholy reverse discovered for the medals 
of Jena, Austerlitz, and Friedland. 

The Attendant always knows of what disease he shall die : on that point he is 
never mistaken ; it is the result of his experience, and the crowning-point of all 
his labour. When he is once certain of his complaint, do not imagine that he 
seeks to cure it ; on the contrary, he affords it every imaginable facility, and 
ordinarily dies by what he has most lived, his digestion. Dying, he leaves his pipe 
to the Number he esteems the most, and his body to the dissecting-room. A 
cemetery appears to him a superfluity, and he regards a tomb as an obstacle to the 
circulation — a monument as an affectation and weakness not to be thought of — and 
the cemetery of Pere la Chaise as an eligible site for a Vauxhall Garden. Jean 
merely recommends himself to the pupil whom he thinks the cleverest, and invites 
several of the others to take a piece, — this one an arm, another a leg, or a foot, or 
a hand, or the head. As to his teeth, if he have any left, he cannot dispose of 
them, any more than of his hair ; these are the invariable perquisites of the 
servants. 

And the Attendant's soul ? 

Jean cannot remember every thing, and he is not in the habit of thinking of that 
at all ; the good Sisters will be sure to pray for it. But we believe that it started 
first, and is already gone to the devil. We conjure the reader not to send us to 
join it, and we will show our gratitude by wishing him no other attendant in sick- 
ness than a mother, a wife, a sister, or a friend. 




THE GOVERNMENT CLERK. 



BY PAUL DUVAL. 




N France, there are as many varieties of Clerks as 
naturalists ascribe to the Lepidopteres ; but notwith- 
standing the thousand shades of difference, there 
are amongst them, to the keen and careful observer, 
great points of resemblance and striking analogies ; 
in whatever grade of administrative department they 
may be engaged, they have all in view one single 
object, one fixed idea, one common destiny. 
Let us explain in a few words the routine of the 
Clerk's life. At thirty, having a salary of eighteen hundred francs a year, he 
marries an heiress with an income of six or eight hundred more ; he takes a 
lodging, which must not cost him more than four hundred francs, at the further 
extremity of the Marais, or in one of the suburbs of Paris. He walks every day five 
miles to go to his office, and there fill up registers, copy letters, sort and arrange 
heaps of papers, deliver game-licences, passports, receipts, and warrants — or, again, 
to register those who arrive and those who depart ; to make out the conscription- 
lists ; to plan a bridge for this town, a school for the other, and a cavalry-barrack 
for a third ; to circulate the thoughts and stories originating in Paris over France 
and Europe ; from his leathern arm-chair, to keep a vigilant watch on the motions 

B B 



186 THE GOVERNMENT CLERK. 

of such a gambler or such a criminal, or the progress of such a conspiracy, and 
what not besides. Others must have an eye on the thirty-eight thousand French 
boroughs, to ascertain and provide for their wants, their wishes, their opinions, or 
all that relates to politics, trade, the public good, religion, morals, the preservation 
of health, and a thousand other things. Such are the Clerk's multifarious duties 
six hours of six days of the week. Sunday comes, on which day he does not rise 
till ten, and shaves much later than usual. Towards three he quits his dull suburb, 
and starts with his wife for Paris, where they walk two hours for an appetite, and 
dine for two francs at Richefeu's, on perdrix aux choux, a salade de homard, a sole au 
gratin, with a meringue a la cr4me for a dessert ! After dinner they go in summer 
to the Champs Elysees, and in winter to Musard's Concert. At half-past ten 
they walk home, where they scarcely arrive before midnight — the poor wife almost 
dead with fatigue — and thus ends the day. 

But the Clerk's family increases ; he has at least two children, often three. 
After having all his life railed, cursed, and sworn at the profession chosen for him 
by his father, — after having exclaimed a thousand times with the personage in the 
Fourberies de Scapin, " Qu'allais-je faire dans cette galere ?" he thinks himself 
most fortunate in obtaining a similar situation for his son, who, in his turn, will 
say and do as his father did and said before him. Such, until he is pensioned off — 
and of this phase of his life we shall have to speak hereafter — is the common 
destiny of the married Government Clerk. 

The class of unmarried Clerks is much more numerous than that of the married. 
" What is the use of marrying?" say they : " if we marry for love, what misery not to 
be able to offer to the woman of our choice the thousand amusements, the charming 
nothings, the jewels, ribbons, and flowers, which go for so much to constitute female 
happiness ! If, on the contrary, we marry, like too many others, merely for con- 
venience, why thrust ourselves, without any compensation whatever, into the 
hornet's nest of nurses, doctors, and dress- makers' and milliners' bills ? Let us try 
if it be not possible to live otherwise." Thus, alas ! it is from poverty that the 
greater number doom themselves to celibacy, and, perhaps, are thus even more 
unhappy than those of their brethren who have ventured on matrimony. It is true, 
that the single Clerk is free, and proud of his liberty till he is forty. He dines at 
the table d'hote at thirty-two sous, frequents the public walks, concerts, theatres, 
bals champ&res, and otherwise, and is occasionally animated by the fleeting 
excitement of an adventurous existence. But gradually the scene changes ; his 
hair turns grey, he numbers forty-five winters, and the age of illusions passes 
away, never to return. Concerts, balls, and plays, amuse him no longer. What is 
to be done ? To what innocent passion can he devote himself ? How must he fill 
up his long summer mornings, his interminable winter evenings ? Important 
questions, these ! Dining at tables d'hote is moreover become insufferable to him. 
He can no longer endure to meet each day new faces which he may never see 
again. Then, if he compare the flavourless soup, and the harmless liquids in which 
swim the meats at his table d'hote, with the delicious dishes and sauces so exqui- 
sitely prepared in private families, what a difference suggests itself to his mind ! 
From this time a great change takes place in the single Clerk's life ; he renounces 



THE GOVERNMENT CLERK. 187 

the world, its amusements, its brilliant assemblies, to study a science, or devote 
himself to some quiet mania. He takes either to ornithology or numismatics, 
collects minerals, classes butterflies or shells, stuffs to the best of his abilities all his 
neighbours' dead canary birds, and subscribes to five or six illustrated editions. He 
ends by engaging a housekeeper, takes his meals at home, and settles down for life 
as comfortably as he can. 

Strange inconsistency ! It is certainly the business of the state to encourage and 
uphold marriage, for it is a guarantee for individual morality and social stability; and 
to regard it only in a political point of view, it is evident that a country where the 
number of bachelors exceeds that of married men will always be a prey to revolu- 
tion. Notwithstanding this, the greater number of Government Clerks in France 
are forced to remain bachelors, and constrained to live in constant revolt against all 

laws, moral and divine. Thus the Government itself It is useless, we 

imagine, to push this argument any farther. 

It has been calculated that the average salary of Government Clerks is about 
fifteen hundred francs. Fifteen hundred francs ! 

Yet with what eagerness do applicants crowd the ante-room when the places are 
distributed, each trying to be first in this most fortunate phalanx. They push, 
scramble, knock down, denounce, calumniate. All the deputies from one of the 
first departments in the kingdom will go to solicit the Ministre de l'lnterieur * or 
the Ministre des Finances f, for a clerkship with a salary of a thousand francs, and 
perhaps their request will be granted. 

There were formerly, it must be acknowledged, situations under Government 
worthy of exciting the ambition of the thousands of young men with no patrimony 
save their education. These situations had commencing salaries of ten or twelve 
thousand francs. Those who were fortunate enough to obtain them used to go 
late to their office, and leave it early; and, in fact, whether they attended or not, 
the result seemed much the same, as, their proficiency being rather doubtful, the 
nation did not appear to suffer much from their idleness. To glance over a file of 
papers, to confer a quarter of an hour with the head of the office, the Secretary- 
General, or the Minister, to answer applications from persons of importance, to 
throw aside those from the obscure and unpatronized, — such were their daily tasks. 
In the evenings, they might be seen displaying a red ribbon and a joyous face, 
either in the Tuileries, or at one of the theatres. Happy days, those, and of easy 
work ! But times are changed, and these situations are fast passing away. It is 
to the representative government — to honourable scrutinizers of the budget — that 
the suppression of these scandalous sinecures is owing. However, the multitude, 
who are ignorant of this reform, eagerly run after public employment with the 
same ardour, relying on the stability of their patrons. Imprudent applicants, con- 
sider the age we live in ! Is there anything now-a-days permanent or lasting ? 
Who can say to-day what power the parliamentary tempest may not destroy to- 
morrow ? Look around you ; each day some sanguine clerk, who had dreamt of 
a salary of twelve thousand francs, the red ribbon, and a snug sinecure, in vain 

* Home Secretary. t Chancellor of the Exchequer. 



188 THE GOVERNMENT CLERK. 

looks for his vanished patron, and perceives with dismay that he must vegetate all 
his life in the subordinate grades of his administration. 

An example will better illustrate the disenchantments reserved for the majority 
of Clerks, and show with what inexhaustible patience they must arm themselves, in 
order not to be discouraged by the dilatory excuses that retard their promotion. 
Take we a case at random from a thousand. 

Felicien has the honour to hold a situation in a Government office in the country. 
He was twenty when he first entered : he is now thirty-two ; thus he has served 
twelve years, and his character for punctuality and assiduity stands very high. 
Yet Felicien's salary is only twelve hundred francs ; and as he is not without ambi- 
tion, his efforts to obtain promotion are unceasing. How many letters has he not 
written, setting forth his rights, making mention of his useful services, his age, and 
the favourable reports of his superiors. How many times has he not entreated, 
supplicated, conjured the Deputy of his town personally to recommend him to the 
Minister, on whom depends his advancement, — and all in vain. Desperate with 
successive disappointments, Felicien resolves to take the journey to Paris, and 
apply in person at head- quarters : he procures a loan of a thousand francs, and sets 
off at once ; he is soon in the Minister's ante-room, near the source of all patronage 
and favour. What could a Minister reply to a man who has served most satis- 
factorily during twelve years at a salary of twelve hundred francs, and whose 
demand was only for an additional two or three hundred ? The Minister promises 
him the first place vacant. 

" That of Verrieres will soon afford an opening," answers Felicien, prepared for 
everything. 

" Very well, then, you shall have it." 

However, a week elapses, and his nomination is not signed : he now learns 
that the appointment is earnestly solicited by the protege of an influential per- 
sonage, and that it is in fact promised to him. " 'Sdeath !" cries Felicien, " am I 
to lose my trouble in coming all the way to Paris ?" Straightway he renews his 
application, drags two or three Deputies, nolens volens, to the Minister, gets Peers 
and Marshals to write to him, and even obtains a letter from some one at Court. In 
consequence of this formidable display of his forces, his rival is beaten back, and a 
few days after Felicien returns triumphantly to the Minister; but, instead of 
receiving the expected appointment, to his great mortification and astonishment, he 
is addressed as follows : — 

" Sir, the Minister regrets exceedingly that he is not able to give you the 
situation you have solicited ; but the justice that regulates all his appointments 
makes it his duty to nominate a clerk who has a family to support, and has served 
twenty-two years. Be assured, Sir . . . ." 

"What!" interrupted Felicien, forgetting for a moment his usual caution, "is 
it my fault that you have been unjust to this poor man for so many years ? I must 
then serve twenty-two years, and have half-a-dozen children, to qualify myself for 
a salary of fifteen hundred francs ! The prospect is an agreeable one." 

On the morrow of this fatal day, Felicien was on the road back to his own 
department. 



THE GOVERNMENT CLERK. 189 

How many clerks are there who, in the liberal or mechanical arts, might have 
established themselves in comfortable circumstances, by consecrating to their pur- 
suits one quarter of the perseverance, tact, and sometimes real talent, that are 
required to advance, even very slowly, in a Government Office ! 

There are some Clerks who, being married, are afflicted with jealousy ; others are 
totally exempt from this morbid disposition. There are also the timorous, the lounger, 
the plodder, the flatterer, the angler ; some professing for politics the most profound 
indifference ; others — attentive to the slightest movement of England, Russia, or 
Egypt — settle every morning the future fate of nations. 

We shall attempt to set down a few slight traits of these interesting members of 
the animal kingdom. 

Can a more dreadful existence be imagined than that of the jealous Clerk ? Sup- 
pose him busily engaged in the duties of his office, writing to a mayor, a curate, or 
a tax-gatherer, or regulating the accounts of a borough situated two hundred 
leagues from Paris. All at once a fearful idea strikes him; and the questions, 
" My wife ! where is my wife ? — Is she at home ? — Who is with her ?" — suggest 
themselves to his imagination. He is no longer master of himself: unable to write 
two connected sentences, he clutches his pen with fury, and commits twenty errors 
in his calculations. It won't do. Completely subjugated by the demon Jealousy, 
he slips away, starts from his office, and arrives home breathless, under some pre- 
text, to find his wife quietly seated at her piano, playing one of Musard's quadrilles, 
or Jullien's waltzes. He returns to his work tranquillized for a few hours. So far 
it is very well ; but let the jealous Clerk beware lest he repeat these foolish visits 
too often. Over-dread of the monster will be certain to throw him under his paws ; 
and as soon as he is thought to be suspicious, that instant his conjugal happiness 
is in jeopardy. 

Is not the Clerk to whom the fearful passion of jealousy is unknown, a thousand 
times more fortunate ? — Is he not always more calm, and more happy ? He rises at 
his own hour, before or after his wife, as he pleases ; is master at home, dines every 
day on his favourite dishes, goes to his office when he likes, and does there only 
what he likes. Occasionally, perhaps, a careful observer might remark a frown or 
an angry look ; but in a few seconds the cloud passes away, and his features resume 
their wonted serene and happy look. In reality, what more can he desire ? He has 
a pretty wife, advances rapidly without solicitation, and pockets, without trouble, 
many extra gratuities. His " Secretaire- General," who has taken a great fancy to 
his youngest daughter, often selects him to inspect such a prison, such a stud, or 
the accounts of a country receiver- general ; and his colleagues, gossiping round 
the fire, say of him, " It seems that Leopold's wife is going to present her lord 
with another pledge of their love, for he is just nominated head clerk. E sempre 
bene /" 

We must not forget the timorous Clerk : this class admits of many subdivisions. 
First, there are those who live in continual dread of revolutions, of informations 
against him, and dismissals ; but let us pass lightly over this variety, though worthy 
of compassion. Next comes he who dreads thirty years of his life to be behind time 
at his office ; and the fear of not being able to sign in time on the morrow what in 



190 THE GOVERNMENT CLERK. 

office language is called the " Time Register," haunts him even in his sleep. He is 
always fearful of accidents or street stoppages, and has no confidence in his own 
watch, or in any clock, public or private. Once, perhaps, in his life, he is, by 
some unlooked-for casualty, retarded for five minutes. On such an occasion, his 
frightened and absent looks, the manner in which he rushes past the crowd, and 
the rapidity with which he skims over the asphalte pavements, are ludicrous and 
remarkable. He wants no omnibus : he leaves them all behind. At last he 
reaches his office ; and, well known for his punctuality, escapes reprimand. 
So much the better ; but it will be long ere he runs such a risk again, and for 
the next twelve months his name invariably stands first in every page of the Time 
Register. 

I knew a martyr to this terrible Time Register. He was four-and-twenty, and 
over head and ears in love. One day, his mistress gave him an appointment the 
next morning at ten o'clock. " Ten o'clock ! " thought he, when he had left her : 
" and the Register closes at a quarter past ! And my future prospects ! I, who 
have never yet been behind time! What will the head clerk say?" The poor 
young man did not go to his rendezvous. A fortnight afterwards, he had the satis- 
faction of meeting his charmer on the arm of one of his colleagues, who made a 
point of being ill twice a week. 

There are shades amongst those varieties of Clerks, which to dwell upon would 
be useless, their designation being a sufficient description. Such are the idler, who 
contrives to work only an hour a day ; the plodder, who is scrupulous of losing an 
instant ; the malade imaginaire, who, for thirty years, fancies himself threatened 
with serious illness, expecting which he solicits frequent leaves of absence, and 
is bled and takes medicine regularly every fortnight; the joker, who is always 
propounding riddles and playing tricks ; the flatterer, who is sometimes nick- 
named by his fellow-clerks, " the Spy," &c. &c. The Pluralist demands a sketch 
to himself. 

The hours of business in a public office are usually from ten to four o'clock. As 
long as the Clerk remains unmarried, he sleeps, or otherwise idles away the eighteen 
hours leisure afforded him by Government ; but when he marries, and children 
bring poverty, he tries to make the best possible use of his spare time. Then, in- 
deed, his life is the most laborious and varied imaginable. It is hardly six o'clock, 
when he is already up and copying deeds and abstracts for solicitors ; he colours 
prints, gives lessons in drawing, or on the French horn, or perhaps writes articles for 
the pictorial magazines, or scribbles novels or compilations at fifty francs a volume, 
according to his intelligence or inclination. From ten till four he is at his office. 
His dinner over, at six he betakes himself to some theatre on the Boulevart, to play 
the bassoon ; or, if he is no musician, he employs his evening in keeping the books 
of some tailor, grocer, or any other shopkeeper in his neighbourhood. Such is 
his daily existence till eleven o'clock. Poor victim to marriage ! — what industry ! — 
what self-denial ! Setting these aside — thanks to his unremitting exertion for 
seventeen hours per diem — the pluralist Clerk succeeds in providing food and 
clothing for his wife and children, and adds eight or nine hundred francs to his 
Government salary of fifteen hundred. 



THE GOVERNMENT CLERK. 191 

Such are the principal types of the Clerk. His life in the country differs some- 
what from that in Paris. In the first place, almost all country clerks are married, — 

" Car, que faire en province, a, moins qu'on s'y marie?" 

and, married or single, they are more fortunate than their brethren in the capital. A 
comfortable existence is not radically impossible in the country ; and they may see 
rich merchants and easy landholders live in no better style than themselves. Again, 
in small parochial towns, the Clerk meets with certain consideration. As a bachelor, 
his fifteen or eighteen hundred francs insure him a favourable reception with the 
mammas ; and more than one young lady would prefer him to a prosperous trades- 
man, because with him she would have no shop to look after, would be able to dine 
at five o'clock, and would be received at " the prefecture." As a married man, he is 
invited and welcomed by the best families in the town, excepting, of course, the proud 
nobility of the place, unless his name be prefixed by the magic monosyllable De. 
If his wife be young, pretty, and clever, she is the intimate friend of Madame la Pre'- 
fete, of Madame la Generate, or Madame la Sous-Intendante. [We ask the English 
reader's pardon, and assure him that in France these untranslatable words pass 
current in the country] . He is invited to all dinners, and goes to small as well as 
large parties at the Receiver- General's. What an enviable existence ! And this is 
not all. Every evening, while the shopkeeper is still weighing or measuring his 
goods, — when the journeyman looks anxiously at the heavens, impatient for the 
tardy sunset, — when the industrious sempstress redoubles her activity, as she re- 
members that she has not yet earned her tenpence, — the cheerful and well-dressed 
Clerk and his wife sally forth for their evening w r alk ; or, if it be winter, meet with 
other clerks and their families to play at bouillotte for a farthing the fish, or to 
gossip, criticise the ladies of their acquaintance, read the newspaper, and talk of 
their rights to advancement, till eleven o'clock. 

Yet these Clerks are not perfectly happy : they have a grief, a canker-worm, in 
their imagination. Will it be credited ? — They envy the Clerks in Paris. " Ah ! " 
say they, " if we were in Paris, we should not be thus forgotten. There are neither 
advancement, nor favours, nor gratuities, but for Clerks in Paris. There is always 
some benefit arising from proximity to power. When shall we be able to go to 
Paris ?" At last the day does arrive, when, after incredible privation, they are en- 
abled to start on the grand journey ; and as they have generally contrived to secure 
the good word of the Deputies, Peers, and Lieutenants- General of their several 
departments, they do not doubt, by good management, to accomplish the object 
of their wishes. But we need not follow them to the capital. The reader has 
not forgotten the disappointment and discomfiture of the unfortunate Felicien ; and 
the same thing is of daily occurrence. 

It is plain, then, that the Clerk is discontented in Paris, — that he is discontented 
in the country, — in a word, that he is happy nowhere. Generally, it may be said 
that there is not a more wearisome condition, a more uneasy and tormented ex- 
istence. Imagine a man who, earning barely a subsistence, is compelled to solicit, 
beg, and cringe, to obtain what he considers due to him ; and convinced, by sad 
necessity, that if he does not solicit, beg, and cringe, but resolves to wait patiently, 



192 THE GOVERNMENT CLERK. 

and trust to the impartiality of those in power, he will as surely die unpromoted. 
Knowing this alternative, what is to be done ? He intrigues in his turn ; he leaves 
no means untried ; he clings to the patronage of those likely to become powerful ; 
and sometimes, but very rarely, by dint of elbowing one, and jumping over the 
shoulders of another, he succeeds in leaving behind him those who have incon- 
testible but unsupported claims, and secures a snug situation of eight or ten 
thousand francs. 

However, while some are in despair, some cursing intrigue, and others benefitting 
by it, time is rolling on for all. The Clerk has served thirty years : the period for 
his retirement has arrived ; but, alas ! here again are new grievances and fresh dis- 
appointment. In his youth, the Clerk is ever pining for the day when he shall 
retire, break his chain, recover his liberty, his independence, his freedom of 
speech, &c. When the time really arrives, his language is no longer the same. 
He resembles the Woodman in the presence of Death, in the fable. " What ! 
already," cries he. " What tyrannical injustice ! I have scarcely begun to reap 
the fruit of my labour, and now I am dismissed ; and with the stroke of a pen goes 
the one-half of my income! I who took so much pleasure in framing reports, 
auditing accounts, writing despatches, &c. What is to become of me?" The 
Clerk then invariably forgets that there was a time when he was indignant that the 
old should bar the road to the young. However, retire he must, willingly or un- 
willingly, in spite of all appeal ; and if his children are all provided for, and there 
is nothing to keep him in Paris, he usually retires to some small town in its imme- 
diate vicinity, and not unfrequently lives till he is eighty, — happy when his savings 
have enabled him to purchase an acre of land, and subscribe, conjointly with the 
mayor of the place, to the oldest of the opposition newspapers. 

There are some sad exceptions to this resignation and longevity. " Have you 
heard the news?" says sometimes one of the clerks, as he mends his pen, to his 

comrades in the office. '.' Have you heard the news of old A , our pensioned 

head clerk?" 

"No.— What of him?" 

" You know that he retired to the environs of Chantilly, at the entrance of a 
charming village, surrounded by magnificent vegetation ; but it was the verdure of 
his papers, not that of the fields, that he cared for, poor man ! As soon as he had 
ceased to see them about him, his health began to decline ; he lingered six months ; 
he who used to be so contented and happy in his office ! His spirits entirely for- 
sook him ; a slow disease gradually undermined his health, and wore his body to a 
shadow." 

" And how is he now?" 

" Very well : he died yesterday ! " 




THE KEEPER OF THE TABLE D'HOTE. 



BY AUGUSTE DE LACROIX. 




ERGrING towards your twenty-fifth year, and a 
stranger in Paris, we will suppose you, gentle 
reader, recently arrived in that city, where you 
come to mourn the loss of a rich uncle who 
made you his heir. After having visited every 
place of amusement, and duly admired all the 
lions of the metropolis of the civilized world — 
the superb chess-board of the Place Louis XV., its 
marble knights, sculptured kings and queens, and 
gilded pawns ; the graceful pirouettes of the sisters Elssler, the Royal Menagerie, 
the Chamber of Deputies, and the Concerts-Musard — as you are departing one 
evening from a noted restaurant's, where you have dined very indifferently for ten 
francs, you suddenly remember, to your great astonishment, that in all your pere- 
grinations you have hitherto neglected one of the most interesting curiosities of 
Paris — one that is distinguished by its peculiar features, and is always striking, 
animated, and original — one that invites you by its charms, and which still may 
resemble, in its enjoyment, the imperfect reality of a pleasant dream, which is good 
in itself, yet with which you have the undoubted right to find fault — a Table 
d'Hote in Paris. 

Accordingly, a few minutes before six the next day, ciceroned by a friend, you 

c c 



194 THE KEEPER OF THE TABLE D^HOTE. 

are making your way towards the Boulevart des Italiens, or one of the principal 
streets near it, and you repair to the first or second floor of a mansion of elegant 
exterior. You are ushered into a magnificent apartment, already occupied by a 
numerous and brilliant party. Your protector immediately introduces you without 
ceremony to the mistress of the house, who receives you like an old friend ; and 
you presently pass, with the rest of the company, into the dining-room, which is 
set out in dazzling style. The glittering table is laid for no less than fifty, and the 
guests seem to be all people of consideration. The ladies are generally young, 
pretty, and elegantly dressed ; and display, with more or less advantage, their 
black or blue eyes, the touching expression of their English beauty, or the charming 
vivacity of their Parisian physiognomy. The mistress of the house is forty years of 
age ; she is tall, somewhat faded, often aiming at effect, and speaks with elegance. 
She is fond of talking of her intercourse with fashionable society, her aristocratic 
friends, and her misfortunes ; for the lady who presides over a Table d'Hote at 
six francs a head, has invariably been handsome, rich, and noble. In truth, tears 
have slightly tarnished her beauty. The tyrant to whom her innocence and her 
fortune were confided, equally abused the one and the other, and though you now 
behold the victim under the simple designation of Madame Veuve Martin, you may 
be sure this is only a precaution dictated by honourable pride. Her real name is 
illustrious, and her family highly distinguished. It is rarely that this oft-told tale, 
softly breathed in the ear of some old Celadon, fails to draw a deep sigh of sym- 
pathy from the happy confidant. In truth, the plot of the story is not new, and to 
this are entirely owing its merit and success. We have doubts in store for the 
singular, and listen incredulously to any thing out-of-the-way ; while simple possi- 
bilities of not unfrequent occurrence gain unsuspected credence. But Madame 
Veuve Martin's talent shines particularly in the details. What skill she displays in 
varying the episodes of her tale according to the quality and presumed taste of her 
auditor ! What delicate work on the worn-out canvass ! With what marvellous 
tact does she skip what might displease, and avoid difficulties, and reconcile con- 
tradictions ! Artistically viewed, her profound diplomacy, her studied rhetoric of 
coquetry, are worthy of the highest admiration. 

It would require great experience, or almost supernatural penetration, clearly to 
see though these dazzling clouds, and discover the truth, which in its primitive 
nakedness would not always be seen to the best advantage. Madame Veuve 
Martin is not, in fact, so unfortunate as she wishes to appear, and her grief is not 
so deep as to exclude all consolation. Though you sometimes surprise her in tears, 
they are not shed for her fallen fortunes, nor even for her somewhat damaged repu- 
tation. Madame Veuve Martin's regret has a more solid foundation, and is not 
inaptly expresssed in the well-known burthen * of Beranger's celebrated song, La 
Grand-mere. 

To tell the truth, Madame Veuve Martin did not first see the light in a richly- 
furnished chamber, but in the humble garret of a porter, that poetical birth-place, — 

* " Ah ! que je regrette 
Mon bras si dodu, 
Ma jarabe bien faite, 
Et le terns perdu !" 



THE KEEPER OF THE TABLE D'HOTE. 195 

that productive nest which constantly supplies the numberless pretty women who are 
in turn the delight and the despair of superannuated gallants and young beginners in 
the career of love. Thence, one fine morning, Madame Martin first tripped lightly 
on the theatre of the world, like the numerous charming creatures of her sex who 
figure on the boards of the " Grand Opera," on the tight rope of Madame Saqui, 
or in the humble shop of the dress-maker. She has since travelled over Europe in 
all ways, and under every kind of name : on foot, on horseback, in post-chaise, 
carriage, diligence, inside and outside, according to the various phases of her 
fluctuating fortune. Madame Martin has observed and learnt much ; she speaks 
several languages, has deeply studied the manners of many nations, and knows the 
human heart like the contents of a well-known book. Her virtue has been exposed 
to many trials, and her destiny united to many destinies. She has descended a 
great part of the river of life in company with an infinity of compassionate pas- 
sengers and generous pilots. After having softened in her seventeenth year the 
last moments of one of the oldest glories of the Empire, she followed the fortunes 
of a young lord, who took her successively to London, Florence, Vienna, and 
thence to Russia, where he left her, on the shores of the Black Sea, together with 
his horses and carriages, in the possession of a band of Cossacks. Her new masters 
sold her to a Jew, by whom she was sold to a Turk, who, in his turn, handed her 
over to the Dey of Algiers, who brought her with him to Paris, in 1831. In one 
of the first quarters of the metropolis she then opened several rich shops, for the 
sale of shawls, damasks, rich stuffs, perfumes, and jewellery that the Dey had not 
given her. A young clerk, to whom she confided her heart and her wares, betrayed 
the one and sold the other, under the pretext of avenging the Dey, who never 
knew anything about it. Madame Martin then entered into friendly relation with 
a circle of amiable ladies, who advised her to establish a Table d'Hote, in a first- 
rate style, with the wrecks of her fortune, offering to support the establishment 
with the spell of their good looks and agreeable conversation. 

Madame Martin is not only a clever woman ; she is a respectable lady, orna- 
mented, like the virtuous Cornelia, with the appendage of a charming daughter, 
carefully brought up away from the maternal roof, which she is never allowed to 
visit, except on the days and at the hours that Mamma in her wisdom has expressly 
appointed. On these occasions, Madame Martin's company includes the elite of 
her customers. The ladies are few in number, rather plain, and not remarkable 
for elegance of toilette; but the gentlemen are of the right age and fortune. 
Mademoiselle Martin is a tall brunette of seventeen, who dances the Cachuca at 
school, and writes all her schoolfellows' love-letters : but here she plays the 
character of a school-miss to the life ; her looks are bashful, and her eyes cast 
on the ground. The compliments and somewhat warm exclamations that greet 
her always unexpected appearance, cause her a charming confusion, and she 
hastens to conceal her face in her Mamma's arms with a sentiment of virgin modesty 
that delights the company, and wins the admiration of the most experienced gentle- 
men present. 

Among these is always one about fifty years of age, of reputed fortune, and 
known liberality. He is generally designated, by the frequenters of the table, as 
" the Protector." To him Madame Martin hastens to present her daughter. After 



196 



THE KEEPER OF THE TABLE D'HOTE. 



receiving the paternal kiss on the forehead, having duly blushed, and creditably- 
gone though the first act of her part, Madamoiselle Martin takes her seat at the 
piano, and proceeds, after a moment's prelude, to sing, in a subdued contr'alto, a 
French ballad or some Italian aria. Then follows the scene of infantile frolics, 
innocent enticements, charming poutings; after which the young lady courtesies 
to the company, and returns to her convent, there to remain until her protector 
thinks proper for her to leave definitively. 

There is also among the guests one who might on occasion pass for Madame 
Martin's husband ; a man of handsome face, decorated with large black whiskers, 
diamond rings on several fingers, and a gold chain, to which is fastened an eye- 
glass. This gentleman, conjointly with Madame Martin, does the honours of 
the table ; his administration includes two departments, and his genius is exercised 
in turn in the dining and drawing rooms. At table he carves, and at play he 
retrieves, with equal dexterity, the evil strokes of fortune towards himself and the 
parties whose side he takes. 

The guests are generally old bachelors, state pensioners, ancient stock-brokers, 
retired merchants, superannuated government officers, and half-pay generals. 
Young men rarely appear at such establishments as this, and are never received 
here with the same welcome that greets them elsewhere. Mature age is an indis- 
pensable qualification for admission. The dinner, let us add, is excellent, elegantly 
served, and the wines are unexceptionable. More than one connoisseur affirms 
that the dinner you have just taken, and which cost you six francs, is worth 
ten. In that case, what comes of the interesting widow's speculation ? You shall 
hear. 

Dinner being over, you return to the drawing-room, where tables have been 
prepared for play. At the invitation of the mistress of the house, you take a seat 
at one, and lose twenty-five louis in a quarter of an hour. If fortune should 
favour you, in spite of the dextrous skill of your antagonist, the lady seated next 
you, who appeared to take so warm an interest in your success, will infallibly ask 
you on rising for a seat in your carriage, and you may soon convince yourself that 
she is prepared to give you in return a place in her heart. 

Leaving this class of Tables d'Hote, let us now pay a visit, in their turn, to the 
establishments frequented by the middle classes, — the Table d'Hote of two and a 
half or three francs. Here you see very few, if any, female faces ; but to com- 
pensate for their absence, men are numerous, and generally young. The foreigner 
of limited income who is in Paris to spend the winter, the young journalist, 
the provincial enriched by a recent legacy, the unmarried merchant, the govern- 
ment clerk, compose the list of visitors. Differing in this respect from first-rate 
establishments of the same kind, chance visitors are rare, the ladies less elegantly 
dressed, and the gentlemen of less superannuated gallantry. Conversation is 
general, easy, often interesting, and nearly always finishes at the dessert, in a noisy 
discussion on politics, literature, the fine arts, or the state of the money-market. 
Sometimes all three subjects are agitated at once, from one end of the table to the 
other ; when the hubbub might make the visitor fancy himself in the gallery of the 
Funambules, or in the Chamber of Deputies on a day when ministerial members 
batter down some deputy of the Opposition by a skilful manoeuvre of the ivory 



THE KEEPER OF THE TABLE D 5 HOTE. 197 

paper-knives, with the accompaniment of the parliamentary cough. There is no 
card-room, coffee being served in the dining-room after cheese and a plain dessert. 
Sometimes, however, two of the oldest of the customers sit down in a corner of the 
apartment to a quiet game at ecarte. The women, if any be present, take no 
interest in such a harmless contest, and the company break up to attend to their 
business or their pleasure. 

The dinner itself is good and homely, like the guests, — neither magnificent nor 
mean ; just such as might be wished for his old age by an artist not intoxicated by 
glory, or a respectable citizen from Quimper or Lons-le-Saulnier. 

These Tables d'Hote of the second degreee have generally a double feature, being 
lodging, as well as boarding houses. For two francs more a day, each guest may 
become at the same time tenant of one or two rooms (according to their dimensions 
and the style of the furniture), his sojourn in which the mistress of the house tries 
all in her power to make agreeable and comfortable. The latter is a lively, 
bustling, and agreeable little woman, who is horrified neither by a hazarded com- 
pliment, nor a stray double- entendre. Her business is to be on good terms with 
her guests from six in the morning till midnight, exclusively ; her skill consists in 
never going beyond those limits. The prosperity and good order of the establish- 
ment depend on the scrupulous observance of this principle. The first duty of her 
profession is to construe the word as meaning nothing, to promise eternally, to keep 
up rivalry between her guests without bad feelings, and constantly to preserve her 
virtue between these two dangers, — too much, and too little. For this reason, the 
president of a Table d'Hote at three francs ought to be thirty years old, to have 
dark hair, a graceful form, an experienced eye, and a fluent tongue ; and it would 
be as well if she had played for five years, or less, the part of coquette in the country 
or abroad. If to all these qualifications be joined love of order and economy, and 
a heart at once inflexible on the score of payment, and insensible to declarations of 
love from her customers, her fortune is assured. At forty-five she sells her 
business, irrevocably unites her destiny with that of some seductive commercial 
traveller, and both retire into the country to taste the sweets of conjugal life, at 
the rate of two hundred pounds a year. 

Immediately below these intermediate establishments, ranks the Table d'Hote at 
twenty-five sous, which is worthy of particular notice. It is always situated be- 
yond the Barriers, which accounts for its humble pretensions. Its physiognomy 
is so changeable as to defy the most skilful attempt at analyzation. No distinctive 
features, no defined lines, no generalities, no ensemble ; but striking individualities, 
the most marked contrasts, a confused mixture of countenances, languages, and 
costumes the most dissimilar. The Italian refugee and the intrepid Pole daily re- 
present the exiled hero living on his love of liberty and thirty francs a month from 
the Government. The unsuccessful literary adventurer, the unknown artist, the 
unfortunate speculator, the half-pay lieutenant, the supernumerary clerk, the hawker, 
the woman in search of what Diogenes sought at mid-day with a lantern, the Don 
Quixote of the public street, the speculator of doubtful character, the man who lives 
on the police funds, — all these, closely packed side by side, eat, drink, laugh, talk, 
cry, and swear, for twenty-five sous a head, coffee included : toothpicks are charged 
extra. There are also cheap cigars for smokers of both sexes ; for here, the fairest 



198 THE KEEPER OF THE TABLE D'HOTE. 

half of mankind will not hesitate, in order to please the other, to adopt tastes and 
habits the most opposed to female delicacy. 

Do not, however, be discouraged: happy exceptions and consoling contrasts 
everywhere exist ; honest faces and decent figures are frequently seen, here and 
there, among the more or less savage-looking faces that extend along the table in 
two parallel and moving lines ; here and there, elegant conversation and polite 
words are exchanged between two neighbours. This kindred feeling of education 
is recognized at a glance : one instinctively seeks one's equals, and words are inter- 
changed ; the number of these visitors of congenial disposition increases ; they cen- 
tralize, and presently form a knot that goes on increasing, and a little society apart, 
into which the rough-beards of the place do not like to venture. 

A characteristic feature of the Table d'Hote at twenty-five sous is the presence 
of one or two pretty women (according to the importance of the concern), who 
free themselves regularly every day from the prosaic tribulations of payment. 
These ladies are placed at the centre of the table ; they are not more than five- 
and-twenty, rather pretty, and, above all, very amiable. The colour of their 
hair is not of great importance, but brunettes are preferred, as being the most 
piquant, and of most certain and general effect. On these conditions, these ladies 
are treated with every mark of attention, and dine every day for the love of God 
and their neighbour. These female parasites, who are generally called flies, on 
account of the lightness of their behaviour, or perhaps by analogy with the parts 
they play on this occasion*, are nevertheless only to be met at the Tables d'Hote 
of the highest and lowest degree. They do not appear at the Table d'Hote at three 
francs : the mistress of the house excludes them with a vigilance that profits at once 
morality and her coquetry, — two incompatibilities that she alone has found means 
to reconcile. 

If ever, in one of those fits of erratic humour to which all true Parisians are peri- 
odically subject at the return of spring, you should take it into your head to pass 
the Barrier, in order to behold, from the height of Montmartre, the setting of the 
sun, allow me to join you, and direct your poetical excursion. In the first place, 
particular reasons, which you shall soon know, compel me to take you in preference 
through the Barriere Pigale. Instead of commencing forthwith our ascent up the 
opposite street, let us turn to the left, and cross the Boulevarts. It is only half- 
past five, and the sun will not set yet these two hours. Perhaps you have not 
dined ? — No. Then permit me to offer you a dinner at the Barriere. Bah ! a little 
shame is soon overcome, and I promise not to betray you to your friends of the 
Cafe de Paris. Here we are, exactly opposite the Table d'Hote of M. Simon. Look 
up and read, then, on the right of that little green door with a lattice, on the bill 
pasted on the wall : — " Table d'Hote at one franc twenty-five centimes, every day, 
at half-past five o'clock." Come, no one is looking at you — come in with me. 

The tables are already laid in the garden, under an arbour of vine and honey- 
suckle, covered with canvass in the form of a tent. Let us take our seats, and do 
not be impatient. It is, in truth, six o'clock, and dinner was announced at half- 
past five — by the watch of the master of this house. Now, by a general rule, the 

* The Police Spies, in France, arc commonly called Mouches, " Flies." 



THE KEEPER OF THE TABLE D 5 HOTE. 199 

watch of the master of a Table d'Hote is always half an hour too slow : this, added 
to a quarter of an hour generally allowed, makes nearly an hour. During this time, 
the soup may be cooling, and the shoulder of mutton burning ; but customers drop 
in, the dishes are served, and the receipts are saved. 

That individual near the centre of the table, solidly planted in his chair, wearing 
a Grecian cap slightly inclined over his left ear, and inclosed in a round jacket, is 
M. Simon, the master of the house. His eye wanders complacently over the crowd 
of stooping heads, while he helps the smoking soup right and left. M. Simon 
never speaks, except to give orders. His words are solemn, and his voice authori- 
tative ; his countenance is expressive of the full consciousness of the personal 
dignity and high responsibility that devolve on him. In the intervals between the 
courses, he may occasionally join in the conversation of those sitting on his right 
and left ; but he is constantly watching the movements of his guests. Should any 
of them complain, he quiets them by a smile, calms their impatience, and censures, 
by look and voice, the tardiness of the cook and waiters. M. Simon is evidently 
used to command : there is an imposing self-possession in all his person, and an 
admirable precision in his slightest movements. M. Simon must have been either 
a sub-lieutenant, the leader of an orchestra, or the conductor of a diligence. 

That thin, lively, nimble little woman, whom you see incessantly gliding round 
the table, and from the table to the kitchen, is Madame Simon. Five-and-twenty 
years ago, her grey hair was perhaps a lovely auburn ; her figure was then possibly 
rounded and elastic ; there is no reason to believe that the bloom of the rose never 
flourished on her cheeks ; and I would not bet that her small eyes never kindled 
more than one flame. 

Be this as it may, Madame Simon appears to be constantly walking on live coals: 
her movements are ricketty, her gesture stiff, and the sharp angles of her form are 
visible in strong relief through her short and scanty gown. Impatience and con- 
straint are revealed in the habitual obliquity of her look ; bitterness is in her smile, 
and subdued anger lurks beneath the yellow corners of her round eyes. She replies 
in a bitter-sweet voice to the numerous applications made to her, and seems to wish 
to clutch with her bony fingers the gratuitous supplements wherewith she is com- 
pelled to satisfy the cravings of refractory stomachs. Her whole figure has an old- 
maidish look ; and there are ample grounds for divorce in the sad and languishing 
looks she turns from time to time on her husband. In a physiological point of view, 
Madame Simon's is an eminently bilious-nervous temperament. We do not com- 
prehend Madame Simon at all. 

Considered with reference to her industrial position, Madame Simon is a precious 
woman. She orders the invariable bill of fare, superintends the laying of the cloth, 
the preparation of the soup, and collects, between the second course and the salad, 
the accustomed tribute from the guests. For this last operation, she uses a formula 
that does much honour to her politeness, if not to her imagination. As she per- 
forms her diurnal course round the table, she lightly taps the shoulder of each in- 
attentive guest in succession, and holding ready her palm, says, in almost a whisper, 
" Sir, I begin with you." And at every pause in her round she renews her smile, 
like an experienced collector ; and repeats, as blandly as before, the fatal and 
eternal, " Sir, I begin with you." Artists have been observed to start at the 



200 THE KEEPER OF THE TABLE D 5 HOTE. 

sound of her cracked and croaking voice, and to shudder at the contact of her 
bony fingers. 

The individual whom you are examining with uneasy curiosity, as if you fancied 
you had seen his face elsewhere, is one of those wandering traders who, in obedience 
to the orders of the police, transport, from shop to shop, their merchandize at re- 
duced prices, and their silk handkerchiefs at a franc and a quarter. That stout 
lady, with a large bust and a jolly countenance, who takes her wine neat, peppers 
her spinach, and plants her elbows on the table, is the contraband trader's help- 
mate. She it is who is constantly stationed at the door of her husband's shop, — 
a living advertisement. She represents, in turn, the stranger attracted by curiosity, 
or the citizen's wife, enticed by the cheap price and tempting colours of the goods. 
It is her duty to cry up incessantly the excellent quality of the wares, and to pre- 
tend to buy, in order to push sales. She is a variety of the family of flies. 

The grotesque personage to whom you seem to be listening with a sort of inte- 
rest, is a character peculiar to Tables d'Hote, and deserves a few words of descrip- 
tion. The fatal monomania with which he is affected has not yet obtained a name 
from science. That man daily devours, before his dinner, the contents of every 
daily and weekly — literary, scientific, political, and artistical — newspaper and 
journal published in Paris and the provinces, without omitting a single line, from 
the shipping intelligence to the last sale by auction, both inclusive. This Gargantua 
of the periodical press naturally feels a desire to lighten his memory of part of this 
prodigious and indigestible consumption. Notice to his unfortunate neighbour. He 
will catch you at a word, and force upon you all the puffs, paid paragraphs, and 
half- guinea reclames that are to his taste. He is, moreover, emphatical, and a 
rhetorician, like a professor of grammar in a village school. His heavy and wire- 
drawn phraseology falls on your ear like molten lead, poured, drop by drop, on the 
occiput of a criminal. Appearance as follows : — Age, fifty years ; tall, lean, and 
bilious-looking ; wears a threadbare coat, buttoned close up to his cravat, strapless 
inexpressibles, and a red wig. 

That little man, enthroned yonder at one end of the table, reminds one felicitously 
of the sign of the Glutton. There are the same signs of sensuality, the same ex- 
pansive, shining, and highly- coloured face, with triple chin, small bright eyes, deeply 
sunk in the head, low forehead, and uneasy look. There you see gluttony at strife 
with avarice — a gourmand dining for twenty-five sous ! 

My portraits would never be over, if I attempted . merely to sketch the most 
striking of all the originals of which the Table d'Hote at twenty-five sous affords 
so rich and varied a collection. To Madame Simon alone belongs the faculty of 
seizing and understanding them at a glance, and making them contribute mar- 
vellously to the general harmony and prosperity of the establishment. To bring 
together extremes, to overcome physical and moral antipathies, to watch at once 
over the ensemble and the details, to combine the legislative and the executive in a 
single person, and control and regulate this crowd of rival pretensions and jaws in 
competition, — such is the great art of the Keeper of a Table d'Hote, — such is the 
triumph and the glory of Madame Simon. 




THE PENSIONER. 



BY A. LORENTZ. 




UDGING that I should have plenty of time to visit 
the Hotel of the Invalids*, I hired a coach a few days 
ago, at half-past three precisely, and proceeded thither, 
little thinking that the doors were invariably closed 
to visitors at four o'clock. Vexed and disappointed 
at having travelled all the way to the Gros Caillou 
without attaining my object, I entered into one of the 
coffee-houses upon the Esplanade, to await the arrival 
of a hackney-coach which was to restore me to my 
household gods. I had taken possession of a small isolated apartment on the first 
floor, which commanded a full view of the Hotel. I had just discussed a glass of 
effervescing lemonade, when I heard, through the partition of my private room, a 
conversation which interested me. The voices apparently proceeded from the grand 
saloon ; and much time had not elapsed before I left my solitary situation, and in a 
very indiscreet manner established myself in the vicinity of two journeymen, seated 
opposite each other, with a bottle of wine and a number of the " Pictures of the 
French" before them. This last fact increased my curiosity to a considerable 
extent, and I listened very attentively to the following conversation : — 

" Why didn't you come sooner ? I can't get you passed into the Invalids now ; 
the watchword is given out, ' No further admittance.' There 's no help for it, so 
you must give it up for a bad job, my fine friend, at any rate for to-day. It is a 
great pity though ; for I think I may, without vanity, boast that there's not a lad in 
all Paris, let alone the outskirts, who knows the Hotel as perfectly as your humble 
servant, Colopeau. Here, waiter, a ropal of the very lummiest yellow tape lush. 

* The Chelsea Hospital of France. 



202 



THE PENSIONER. 



Ha ! ha ! ha ! — that fool of a waiter can't understand anything. Come, look awake, 
man. Some white wine : that at a franc." 

" How strong you are coming it !" 

" Not at all, not at all. You shall pay for this ; I'll pay for the next, — leastways 
if we want any more. Here's to Nini, — to Nini, beloved of my soul ! Are you a 
right 'un, eh ?" 

" Of course I am." 

" A right, straightforward, regular, honest fellow, — eh ?" 

" Certainly." 

" Tip us your paw, then ; I'll trust you with my intentions. You are well aware 
that your friend is the president of the Lyrical Society of the Friends of Three 
Colours, singing and dancing, every Sunday and Monday, at Father Gigot's, tavern 
and public-house-keeper, sign of the Conquering Hero, at the Barriere Mont Par- 
nasse, Boulevart Exterieur. Fun, gaiety, honour to the visitors, and homage to the 
ladies. All this, of course, arranged by me ; for arn't I his crack author ? and don't 
I write him all his songs, which, I flatter myself, are something out of the common 
way ? Well, my friend, since you are a regular good fellow, I shall entrust to you 
my posthumous works before I kick the bucket, and you shall enjoy the high privi- 
lege of printing them in your leisure moments." 

" Yes, but recollect, I am not a compositor, but only a printer." 

" For my part, I am a compositor, and by no means a printer. That is the 
reason why I do not make my lyrical productions known to the world ; otherwise I 
should, even at the present moment, occupy no foolish position, I should imagine, 
in the publication of * The French, drawn by Themselves,' to which my patriotism, 
and duty as a citizen and drummer, have led me to subscribe. I'd furnish your 
M. Curmer*, or whatever his name is, with sketches of character : he who never 
gives anything else but sketches of genteel people, such as never had any existence 
in reality. I would, for instance, do him the Tippler, the Bully, the Professor of 
Slang, the Shoe-black, the Horse-skinner, the Tripeman, the Scavenger, the Brick- 
layer's Labourer, the Lemonade- seller at a farthing a glass, the Dealer in Pota- 
toes fried in water, the Dutch Company with their gravy soup concocted of old 
bones, the Lamplighter, the Walking Gentleman of the Funambules, the Tenor of 
Lazari, the Miscreant at Madame Saqui's, the Thief's Public-house-keeper, the 
Informer, the Escaped Convict, the Incorrigible Pickpocket, the Larker, the 
Drummer, the Pensioner, and a thousand others to boot, eh ? These are sketches 
of character, and no mistake. It's not like your Law Student. What's there in 
that, I should like to know ? Law Student — gammon ! He lives in the Faubourg 
St. Germain. What then ? The Grisette, too ; she's as well known as summer 
cabbage. Let those smart fellows, Henri Monnier, Jules Janin, and Gavarni, look 
to themselves ; I'd soon dress their hides for them, I warrant — I, Fanfan la Blague, 
the king, the emperor of singers and funny fellows. If I only knew your M. Curmer 
by sight, I'd go and give him all this myself; and I'd say to him, 'Look here, my 
fine fellow, I don't ask you for anything. I make the reputation of your book. 
Well and good ; I oblige you ; you, of course, are grateful for it, — so you ought to 
be ; we'll go and have a bottle together, you shall pay for it, and whenever you 
want any writing in future, come and find me out.' However, that you may judge 

* The name of the Publisher of the Paris Edition. 



THE PENSIONER. 203 

of the knack that I have of hitting off the portrait of the first comer, I will just 
show you " The Pensioner," which I had brought on purpose to read to you after 
our visit to the Hospital, written and composed by your humble servant Colopeau, 
house-painter by profession, and poet in his leisure. There, call for a bottle of wine; 
and, without stirring from the spot, I will show you all over the Invalids, which 
you came too late to see." 

The bottle being brought, the painter took a long draught, rolled his tongue 
about in his mouth, wiped his lips, and proceeded to enter at once, body and soul, 
into his character of spokesman. His listener was breathless from friendship, de- 
light, and interest. 

" First of all, do you know when the Hospital for the Pensioners was first in- 
vented ? — No, you don't know : do you ? Well, then, it was immediately after the 
Foundling Hospital : two slap-up inventions which were contemporary ; and we 
may say (speaking, as it were, metaphosphorically) that the great Louis XIV. was 
the St. Vincent de Paul of the worn-out veterans of the French army. So much 
for the first. However, to be just, we must own that Henry IV. (who, by the by, 
was nothing of a one-handed fellow in any of his doings) first had the idea of it ; 
and so for number two ; and I calculate that I know above a little of what I am 
talking about, seeing as how I am the son of a wooden leg myself. In those times, 
Louis XIV. said to a chap that they called Liberal Bruant, an artichect, * You'll 
just have the kindness,' says he, ' to make me a plan — something slap-up, mind 
you — for to stow away all the military cripples in my army. But I wish to have 
something out-and-out, recollect ; and as for the expense, why, we won't quarrel 
about a few five-franc pieces more or less. You know very well that I'm not at 
all a stingy old file.' ' Certainly,' says the artichect ; and immediately he tips him 
the house that you now see from the window. See there, my boy ; just look at 
that. What do you think of the style of that, eh ? They don't build many things 
like that now : they 've lost the receipt. 

" After that, Louis XIV. says to another stone-mason, ' You'll do me the favour/ 
says he, ' to build me a church, with a dome all in gold.' ' Good,' says Mansard; 
* I'll build you a metropolis, that I warrant will be quite the ticket/ And lo and 
behold, that chef d'ceuvre that you can likewise view from this window here. Then 
all the sculptors and house-painters, and people of that kind, came and made a 
deuce of a business of it. Lastly, that hero, both in love and in war, the great 
Louis XIV., King of France and of Navarre, made a will, just before he went to 
the right-about-face. Stay ; stop a minute ; let me try and remember the never- 
to-be-forgotten words, which I recollect to have learnt when a youngster at the 
school of the Invalids, where I was drummer. These are them ; I've got them : — 
' Of all the different establishments that we have made during the length of our 
reign, there is none more useful to the State than the Esplanade of the Invalids. 
It is quite correct that the soldiers who have been killed in the wars should receive 
the reward of their long services, so as to be quite out of condition to work, and 
earn their living. The corporals and other officers will find there a table of the 
right sort, and no mistake ; and we must just beg the Dauphin to observe that care 
must be taken of the establishment. This applies as well to all our successors. We 
are persuaded, beforehand, that they will be delighted to do anything to oblige us/ 



204 THE PENSIONER. 

" Some time after, reigned Louis XV., surnamed the Well-beloved, a grandson 
of Louis XIV., a great lazy dog, who spent all the poor people's money upon 
creatures of very free-and-easy and Saint- Simonian-like ideas. The great idiot 
didn't care a curse about the dying injunction of his illustrious grandfather ; but 
chose to forget the services of his brave old soldiers, to reward the services of his 
dearies. But look you, Pierroux, how crime always brings with it its own punish- 
ment. The Revolution came, and destroyed Louis XVI., for to prove as how his 
predecessor had behaved himself like an inhabitant of the sea, that politeness pre- 
vents me from naming. In fact, my good fellow, that great roue, Louis XV., posi- 
tively had the atrocity to have bedaubed with yellow paint, that magnificent dome 
that you have there before your innocent eyes. At that time, the house was con- 
ducted upon a very cheap and nasty principle. Luckily, the year '93 arrived at last; 
but people were much too occupied then to care anything about the old soldiers. 
There were more men spiflicated upon the frontiers, and in foreign parts, than there 
are hairs in my head, by reason of Father Emperor giving up the Consulate to 
enter upon Imperialization. Then the great little man restored the Invalids to their 
original splendour. He had the dome regilded ; and then (that was, of course, a 
part of his profession) he had the church adorned with all the colours that had been 
taken from the enemy, by the valour of his Ex* . . . . ; and at the same time, he 
sent all the surplus of the cannon of the column of Vendome to the building of the 
Esplanade. Well and good; there are the Pensioners at last settled in a decent and 
military fashion. The silver dish now circulates in the Hospital, the same as upon 
the table of Napoleon himself. The kitchens have batteries charged with ammuni- 
tion, which discharge, daily, missiles of the most leguminous, carnal, succulent, and 
savoury nature, to say nothing of the sweets. 

" The Pensioner can, in living with his better-half, console himself about the half 
of his body that he has lost. The children are put to school at the expense of 
Government, and everything goes on quite straight, provided a man mounts his 
guard in his proper turn, and loves and respects his Governor, who is something 
like a Marshal of France. Then there are, moreover, all sorts of amusements. 
There 's the game of skittles, and the game of bowls, and the game of Siam, and 
the game of the tub, — in fact, every game ; and, what 's more than all, a first-rate 
library, and in it the portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte. 

" By the bye, that reminds me of a circumstance that made me cry in fine style. 
If you had seen it, you'd have cried too. There are men for you, true to the back- 
bone, faithful fellows, and such as one can really depend upon. An old fellow 
there, an old good fellow, an old old fellow, a venerable fellow, quite white hair, and 
very little of it : scarcely a breath left in him ; his eyes raised towards Heaven, 
where he is upon the point of going : scarcely can he utter a sound. They press 
round him ; silence is obtained ; he is on the point of death ; but before he dies, 
something is necessary to his happiness ; he wishes, poor old fellow, he wishes to 
see his Emperor. This is not exactly convenient : he's at St. Helena, it's a long 
way off, and it's strictly forbidden to go there ; moreover, the old boy hasn't time, 
— he can't last half an hour. O ! there ! it is his idea, he who is ill, — those that are 
well never think of anything : before the portrait of my Emperor he gasps ; they 

* Colopeau means the Imperial Guard. 



THE PENSIONER. 205 

cany him there. Oh, it breaks my very heart to think of it : this poor brave old 
boy — look ! he smiles, he weeps, he is choking, all around him groan ; theie, he is 
rather quieter now, his eyes are dried ; there are no more tears or oil in the lamp. 
Gone ! gone ! Good God ! good God ! I am crying at it even now, and so are 
you. Come, let's have a drain to his memory; to the health of trustworthy friends. 
Ah ! that sets me to rights a little. I must say I prefer moistening my clay, to 
moistening my cheeks (and he wiped his eye) . Another little drop ; so the bottle's 
empty. Here, waiter, another of the same." 

The journeyman then drew from his pocket several small figures of men drawn 
upon pasteboard, and cut out. I advanced towards them, and asked the painter 
and glazier permission to join in their conversation, explaining to him at the same 
time the cause of my presence in the vicinity of the Gros Caillou. He appeared 
flattered by the desire I expressed to make one of his audience, and he began thus — 

" ' Valour need never wait to number years .... 
He needs no forefathers who serves the state .... 
A lucky soldier was the first of kings .... 
Who perils nothing ne'er with glory triumphs . . . .' 

" ' Valour, &c.' There, that's something that is'nt very far from the truth, with 
respect to these old tipplers of Pensioners ; viz., that it was quite necessary there 
should be no waiting a number of years before they could come with glory to be kept 
warm and comfortable, and to be fed and lodged at the expense of Government. 

" ' He needs, &c.' That he needs no ancestors, as this here line tells us, is 
again very true. A man doesn't want a forefather to be a Pensioner, as he is, in a 
general way, quite old enough to be his own forefather. 

" ' A lucky soldier, &c.' This is truer than ever, as we all know that the Pensioners 
are not the kings of France. This is easily enough explained by the fact, that the 
first king was a first soldier, but since that time, having had a tolerable quantity of 
soldiers, and very few kings, it is no longer extraordinary that the Pensioner should 
not be king of France. 

" ' Who perils, &c.' This is the reason why our old crippled, withered, hop-and- 
go-on veterans have invariably been covered, and always will be covered, with glory, 
all the world over, seeing that their triumphs have never been achieved without 
great dangers : and while upon this subject, I must say that I honour and respect the 
individual whose name I don't however know, whose verses with regard to the old 
soldiers are quite the ticket. I, likewise, — I'll write you some verses upon the 
old soldiers, and the first subject I'll take shall be the old Pen- 
sioner : but then a man must know them, as I know them, to do 
the thing at all properly." 

I now asked him to begin : he calmed his enthusiasm a little, 
took breath, and showed me his little pasteboard figures. 

" This, Sir, represents a little boy with a drum, which he is in 
the act of beating ; he has on an uniform, which is that of the 
drummers of the Pensioners. The children of all the cripples of 
the place form part of the staff of the Hotel. I speak to you 
L knowingly upon the subject, since I handled the drumsticks a 
little myself, in the building of Louis XIV. 




206 



THE PENSIONER. 





" This fellow that you see next, with the crooked legs 
and round back, in his uniform and his cotton nightcap on, 
is the inspecting corporal, who is going his rounds. What 
the devil is all this row about? what an infernal noise. 
Ah, it's the breakfast hour; regular helter-skelter of all 
the old human machinery, who march as bravely to the 
table as they formerly did to battle. 

" What do I see here, in that patent arm-chair ? Ah, it 

is one of the glorious remains of the Ex , who has lost 

both his legs, and both his arms. He is, however, in the 
perfect enjoyment of his trunk. What do I see by his 
side ? — A pretty young girl, with eyes as soft as 
velvet, and the manners of a dove. Ah ! she has 
just been giving the trunk something to drink : 
some gossiping people declare that she is his 
daughter. It's true enough; it beats all to nothing 
the story in ancient history of the woman who 
suckled her papa in limbo, like a baby. Our 
young Pensioner is much more striking; she 
nourishes her papa with wine, her modesty and 
innocence not permitting her to suckle him. 

" Gracious Heaven! what do I behold? The triumph 
of surgery ! The Pensioner with the silver head. It is 
the celebrated grenadier who had his head carried off 
by a cannon ball, at the very moment he was thanking 
his Emperor, who had given him the Cross of the Legion 
of Honour, for an act of courage and valour. A sub- 
| scription was made in his favour at the benefit of the 
Poles, which is the reason that his means enable him to 
stick a silver head of such enormous expense upon his 
shoulders. 
"What can be the matter with this fellow, who is running like a perfect madman ? 
Where are you going, Sir ? in the name of wonder, if you don't look out, you'll 
break your nose. What nonsense ! this warrior has got no nose ; he's going to 
hide himself in his room under pretence of being ill, to escape the inspection : he 
is dreadfully afraid lest any inquiries should be made 
about his nose ; he is just come from putting it in pawn 
at the Mont de Piete. 

" In the name of Heaven, separate them, separate 
them ! They have been beating each other to death : 
they have just been quarrelling, and both of them are 
in the right. It is the one who has no arm, that has 
given the one who has no leg a severe box on the ear, 
because the one who has no leg had given him a violent 
kick in a part of his person that was not, by any means, 
made of silver. 





THE PENSIONER. 



207 



" Ah ! here's the sentinel, who is holding a lance in his 
hand ; — not so, not so, — the lance is held by an iron hook, 
which does duty for all the phalanges natural to man. 

" Attention ! here's a new picture. Here are two fellows, 
who, although but with one arm each, are by no means one- 
handed lads when it comes to filling themselves a pipe ; you 
see one hand holds the steel, and the other the flint. 

"Ah ! here's a fellow who appears to be in a hobble : he was 
fishing with a line on the edge of the water, and had taken off 
his wooden legs, which are travelling down the stream like 
little pleasure boats. Luckily for him, a companion of his who 
has just finished washing his snuffy pocket-handkerchief, stops the progress of his 






old friend's wooden legs with his walking-stick, which, as he had established him- 
self washerwoman in an old broken-down punt, he manages to accomplish without 
great difficulty. 

" Where, in the name of goodness, are these fellows going, with their sleeves on 
like the public scriveners, so as not to dirty themselves ? Oh ! they are going to 
fire off the handsome cannons that are above, by the borders of the moat of the 
Hotel. It is a f&te day, — military fete day. Oh, if you knew how happy the old 
boys are when listening to the noise of the cannons ! One reads in their faces the 
warlike recollections of the troubled times of the Empire. Behind the cannonaders 
you see several other pensioners, who are making 
all sorts of circles in the dust with their canes. 

" They have finished firing off the cannon, and 
they are having a snug little game at bowls and 
skittles. Gracious Heavens ! Look, look ! There's 
one fellow on his back : see, he's laughing ready 
to split his sides : what the deuce is he say- 
ing ? It was the ball that mistook his pins for 
the nine-pins. Ha ! ha ! ha ! he'll never leave off 
laughing. 

" It is night-time ; there's one fellow going to bed, he is putting an ancient pair 
of spectacles, with only one glass to them, on his nose. See, he is reading over 
again the reports in the Moniteur of the movements of the Grand Army. He looks 




208 



THE PENSIONER. 



Vr 



L 




as if he had a tremendous inclination to sleep ; he is yawning and 
stretching out his legs and arms for all the world as naturally as 
if he had them all ; he is placing his head upon his pillow. Hallo ! 
he has forgotten to put out his candle. What's he doing there ? — 
he is scratching his nose — no, he is only taking off 
his spectacles. Well, that is a pretty go ; if he 
hasn't positively taken off his nose, and put the 
candle out with it ! A silver extinguisher, my 
eye ! — what do you think of that for style, eh ? There, now he's 
asleep. Pleasant dreams. 

" Look, here's another one without arms, who has a knack of 
folding them on his breast, in order to resemble more strikingly 
his Emperor. 

" And this other fellow, where is he going ? Ah ! he is blind, 
but yet he walks as well as if he had the perfect use of his sight. 
What a thing custom is, after all. He is jjoing to stand treat to 
his comrades. What, then, is he richer man tl ^y are ? Yes, certainly, for as he 
hasn't the slightest occasion for his allowance of candles, he sinks it in small 
glasses of brandy. 

" What, — what, in the name of patience, is this ? Where's this one-armed fellow 

going with his flint and steel ? — See, he is going out of 

the Hotel. Ah ! he's on guard at the corner of the fire, 

in a watch-box, like the check-taker's at a theatre : he's 

fairly in for a night of it in the destruction way, and he 

ought to know a little about that kind of business — he 

who has been suffering destruction all his life. He has 

come across another one-armed veteran, his intimate 

friend, his right hand, a famous counsellor when it comes 

to the discussion of an omelette. Counsellors, however, 

are seldom forkers-out. What a wonder ! they are bidding 

each other good-bye : they have just got sufficient arms 

between them to enable them to shake hands. 

" Ah ! here's Father La Joie ; he is playing at hop- scotch 

with a number of little boys : he is standing on one foot, 

with his wooden leg tucked under the half of the arm that 

he has left. 

" Well, I hope you have seen a splendid lot of cripples, 
who are not half such idle dogs as many that are quite 
whole. Honour to valour, although unfortunate, and re- 
spect to brave men, say I. There, Nini, it's all over 
now. Pass me over my receipt, a crust, and a drop of 
something. Good-bye to the company. Thank you for 
standing treat." 






THE CANONESS. 



BY ELIAS REGNAULT. 




|IFE in the Faubourg St. Germain, that living image of 
the eighteenth century, is as full of antiquated re- 
miniscences as a faded beauty, as full of obstinate 
opinions as an elderly gentleman, and yet as full of 
preposterous delusions as the day-dream of a boy. 
The party is defeated one day — to anticipate a triumph 
on the next; and its hopes have already outlived a 
thousand disappointments. It scorns and scoffs at 
the obstinate resistance of events ; and never has 
learned to call Napoleon anything but Bonaparte, or Louis Philippe anything but 
the Duke of Orleans. There is everlasting war between the Faubourg St. Germain 
and the Chaussee d'Antin, — the representatives of the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries. Sarcasm and contempt, jests and sneers, are the inevitable fate of those 
wealthier cits who are fools enough to affect to ape what they have so recently de- 
feated. Trusting in the future, regardless of present deceptions, the noble Faubourg 
has all the assurance of a beauty long without a rival, and all the malice of an ex- 
clusive saint, — a compound of faith and hope with scarce a grain of charity. Never- 
theless, the opposition of the Faubourg St. Germain always displays a good deal of. 
tact. It never attempts, like our parliamentary declaimers, to attack the enemy on 
his own ground, or to encounter the questions which he has brought forward. To 
discuss an opinion is to acknowledge its existence. The Faubourg St. Germain is 

E E 



210 



THE CANONESS. 



ever on its guard against committing itself thus : its opposition is always negative. 
When FraDce ran mad with the military glory of the Empire, the Faubourg St. 
Germain extolled the enjoyments of peace. During the Restoration, the Chaussee 
d'Antin waxed liberal, and the Faubourg St. Germain preached absolutism. Now- 
a-days, the Chaussee d'Antin is sceptical and irreligious, whilst the Faubourg mk- 
Germain has deviated from the principles of the eighteenth century into devotion. 
Its standard of religion is founded not so much on its own faith as its adversary's 
infidelity ; and its pinnacle of virtue is simply the antipodes of the virtues of their 
hostile neighbours. 

Having once assumed this character, the Faubourg St. Germain never gives 
ground, happen what may. It increases the numbers of its convents, stimulates 
the zeal of its missionaries, and recruits the holy army of the faith of either sex and 
every colour : black friars and grey, white penitents and brothers of St. Joseph, 
Sisters of Mercy, Franciscans, and Dominicans, till that part of the town becomes 



of its councils is at the Abbaye aux Bois, the seminary of the neophytes at the 
Sacre Cceur, and the superannuated veterans may drop into their graves at 
St. Valere. 

One of the most curious results to which this rigorous determination to run 
counter to the whole spirit of the age has given birth, is, without doubt, that variety 
of the monastic species which is known by the name of The Canoness. 

The Canoness is a lady of a certain age, — a nun without a convent, in the station 
of a married woman without a husband, with the rank of a countess without being 
noble. To acquire these valuable privileges, nothing is needed but to send three or 
four thousand francs to Saxony, Bavaria, the Rhenish provinces, or some of the 
minor Catholic potentates of Germany, which purchase a seat in some Teutonic 
chapter, whose existence is in fact nominal, but which is some how or other appended 
to one of the sixty budgets in which „the sixty constitutions of Germany rejoice. 
Such are the slender remains of all that the feudal system won from ecclesiastical 
wealth, — such the last shred of that spiritual power of the Empire, which gave rise 
to the mighty controversy and the bloody quarrel of investiture. 

The genus Canoness is divided into several kinds. The first is composed of poor 
young ladies of quality, who sacrifice their little property in order to be called 
" Madame," without marrying beneath them. They lead a life with nothing to 
coloilr or to embellish it — a life of sluggish virtue and frigid mediocrity. The second 
kind is also highly connected, but they belong to the class of emancipated ladies, 
who only want a privilege to sanction their liberty. They are an arrogant race, 
with a sprinkling of philosophy, which makes them laugh at the prejudices of caste, 
and still more at the prejudices of women. They have no great fortune, but they 
have wit enough to occupy a brilliant position ; and they are perfect mistresses of 
the art of tickling the vanity of opulent foreigners, who are enchanted to be on 
visiting terms, as soon as they have set foot in France, with a descendant, in the 
direct line, of Anne of Brittany, or King Rene. The third, and the most curious 
class, is composed of wealthy damsels of low extraction, who are happy to conceal 
their birth' under a title, and the misfortunes of their youth under the style matri- 
monial. It is to these ladies that we propose to call your attention. 



THE CANONESS. 211 

No sooner has she got her diploma, than the Canoness sets up in the Faubourg 
St. Germain : any where else her whole life would be a jest. But there she has a 
career of her own before her; she forms a distinct class in society : she is neither 
maid, nor wife, nor widow — some people are so mischievous as to hint that she is 
4Wthree at once. 

She is not a woman of quality, for her pedigree is a blank : nor of low life, for 
she is a countess. She does not beloDg to the temporal world, for she is wedded to 
the spouse of the Church : nor to the spiritual world, for she retains all the freedom, 
the enjoyments, and the amusements of society. She has taken the veil, but she 
does not wear it ; she has an oratory, but she does not pray there ; she has a con- 
fessor, but I don't know that she repents : she may have a lover, and she will not 
give him up. 

Her life is a figment, as well as her title, her celibacy, and her convent : it is a 
life without consistency and without ties. The consequence is, — as even an anomaly 
has its ine-akable consequences, — that she is the victim of her state of social insub- 
ordination :ner manners are equivocal, her address is not frank, her life is fraught 
with contradictions. The women who pique themselves on their strictness will not 
visit her, because her manners are too lax : those who have no strictness, all pro- 
test that she is a prude. The saints compare her to a priest stripped of his gown : 
the sceptical quiz her for canonicals. One part reject her although she is of the 
Church ; another, because she belongs to it : on every side she suffers for the sins of 
her twofold character. 

The tribulations of the Canoness have taught us how wretched an hermaphro- 
dite would be, if there were such a being. Despised by the men for being a man, 
and hated by the women for being a woman, it would possess neither the 
male beauty of the former, nor the delicacy and grace of the latter. It would 
sigh but for half the enjoyment it might give or receive — and that half it could not 
derive, even from the division of itself. At once a lover and to be loved, it would 
find none to love, and none to love it. Oppressed with a double power and a 
double craving, tortured by impotence in redundancy, it would curse the Fates 
which gave it more than to any other being, whilst they forbade the use of what 
they gave. 

The Canoness lost her mother at an early age : this loss will, in a great measure, 
explain her eccentric position, and her unmarried state, several other circum- 
stances which preceded, and, perhaps, were the very motives of her joining the 
Sisterhood. Her father, a plain, simple, good sort of a man, has passed his whole 
life in labouring to amass the wealth which she devotes to her own purposes : he, 
avoiding the gay world his daughter seeks, and fortifying himself in his solitude 
against those brilliant assemblies so eagerly attended, so fondly cherished, by 
her. You may sometimes perceive a frown steal over the old man's countenance, 
but no reproach ever escapes his lips : perhaps he scorns to utter a harsh word ; 
perhaps he has already experienced its inutility. Thus, deprived of her mother by 
death, separated from her father by her manner of living, the Canoness is almost an 
orphan. Nevertheless, she has a neighbour and companion, in the form of a little 
girl, fondled, caressed, spoiled to the last degree, who calls her "Auntee." This 
brat is, in her eyes, so charming and adorable, but, to every one else, so odious and 



212 THE CANONESS. 

detestable, that it is difficult to explain so much disinterested affection by any- 
collateral relationship. ■ The child's mother is never spoken of ; and though the 
being is hardly six years old, her parents are clean forgotten. The father, indeed, 
is sometimes hinted at ; in one of these moments of feigned indifference, when 
"w<3men seem to let things drop out by accident, the Ganoness will tell you that m 
niece is the daughter of a Russian prince : she takes good care not to throw an air 
of mystery over this communication ; indeed, the more importance she attaches to 
it, the less she chooses to let it appear. To say the truth, she cares but little for 
your conjectures, provided you will only conjecture that her admirers have been 
people of quality : with a prince, there is no such thing as ruin — the proper term, 
is " a conquest." As she has no principles of virtue that are not principles of 
vanity, she would not refuse to play the part of Europa, Alcmena, or Danae with 
Jupiter, but she would reject the charms of Venus, if they were to unite her to 
Vulcan the Blacksmith. Still, I am free to confess, that before I heard that story 
of the Russian Prince, I had not penetrated into the lowest depths of female vanity. 
The dress of the Canoness is in accordance with the rest of her life, that is as 
much as to say, it is discordant with everything about her. In the general effect of 
her dress, she is for ever behind the fashions ; in the minutiae, she will have the last 
new whim. Her cap sprang into creation but yesterday : she will have, the newest 
collar, the most modern scarf, but her gowns are cut on last year's patterns. Who 
can relate the decided part she took in the great contest of full and tight sleeves ? 
— how she clung to the caps of last season, and still resists the introduction of 
lappets ? But in all other respects, except these scraps of things, as she calls them, 
she affects great serenity of costume, and as the symbol of that dignified simplicity 
she selects and sticks to the dress of black satin. It is true that black satin dresses 
are got down to the very kennel, but the Canoness adheres to them. The rest of 
her person will infallibly protect her from misapprehension. 

When we go into the boudoir of the Canoness, the very same contrast will con- 
tinue to strike us. On the chimney, the Lamb without spot or blemish, chiselled 
in alabaster, lies between two Etruscan vases, adorned with satyrs and fauns. A 
gothic kneeling- chair corresponds to a gay willow litter-basket ; and Pradier's little 
statuettes are the pendant to some cherubims of the twelfth century. At the bottom 
of the alcove, which is veiled by the rich folds of the silken drapery, there is a heavy 
crucifix ; on one side is the shell for holy water ; on the other, an image of the im- 
maculate Virgin ; and beneath them a downy divan, which may suggest notions of a 
different character. On each side of the chimney is placed an elegant citron- wood 
bookcase, closed with plate-glass windows, lined with light-blue silk. The one is 
always open, and you may see the rich bindings and splendid chasings of the books 
of piety and prayer that it contains : the other is shut, and conceals its treasures 
from the casual visitor. The intimate friends of the Canoness assert that it con- 
tains a complete set of the works of George Sand and Balzac. Evil-minded people 
go so far as to mention the younger Crebillon. 

From the moment when her entrance into the sisterhood makes the Canoness 
mistress of herself, she sees a good deal of company, receives them with consi- 
derable splendour, and is perfectly aware that a good cook is a most powerful 
means of attraction. Nothing is wanting to the solid part of her dinners ; but the 



THE CANONESS. 213 

finer element, the wine, is detestable. To have a good cellar, you must have a 
master of the house ; but the father of the Canoness, good man ! abdicated long 
ago, and only appears as a make-up guest at her table. Upon the whole, her 
dinners are entertaining, the men in good spirits, and the women very well adapted 
to satisfy a moderate taste ; for the mistress of the house dreads nothing more than 
superiors of her own sex. The consequence is, that she has frequently to change 
her female guests : the humblest toady will not be always satisfied with a subor- 
dinate part, and if she is born to be a slave, she had rather be the slave of a man, 
because that kind of slavery has its advantages. If a coquette of any degree of 
merit finds her way to the rooms of the Canoness, she will soon find her way out 
again without its being shown her. Two coquettes understand each other so well, 
that they never can live upon terms : one cannot dupe the other; and the friend of 
a coquette must be her dupe. 

In this respect the Canoness is peculiarly fortunate : she has a friend — a friend 
who is young, and would even be good-looking if there were any expression in her 
countenance. But that dull eye never sparkled with love or hatred ; that smooth 
brow was never ruffled by a passion ; those coral lips were never unclosed but to 
give utterance to a common-place remark, or a lifeless smile. Amelia is one of those 
young women who act to perfection as the auxiliaries of coquettes, without ever be- 
coming formidable as rivals. The Canoness uses her to the best possible advan- 
tage. With Amelia she can go on a round of adventures ; with Amelia to the 
masked ball ; with Amelia to mass. If she wishes to put a piece of scandal into 
circulation, it will be through Amelia's mouth : if she has a broad remark to 
venture on, Amelia will give it utterance with all the innocence of a convent parrot : 
if she meditates a conquest, Amelia will open the trenches. Amelia says what the 
Canoness thinks : what Amelia says the Canoness will do. Amelia must have a 
strong dose of childish gaiety to be always playing with edge-tools in the most 
equivocal positions ; but she laughs at sighing admirers, and pushes the chosen 
one into the boudoir without a thought. In a word, Amelia is the mainspring of all 
these intrigues ; and, like all mechanical springs, she unconsciously obeys the im- 
pulse which is given her. 

By the side of the friend, figures on all occasions an eternal little busy-body, 
who every time the mistress of the house speaks to him never fails to give her the 
title she has bought — " Indeed, my Lady Countess — Yes, my Lady Countess 
— No, my Lady Countess — Oh ! my Lady Countess." He is the speaking- 
trumpet of her rank, to call every body's attention to the homage due to the pre- 
siding genius of the place. You observe him hovering about her, whispering in 
her ear, scolding the servants, and doing the honours with extravagant rigour : and 
when you ask who he is, you are informed that he is the complaisant bearer of 
private and confidential letters ; the officious agent in all mysterious negotiations ; 
the chief secretary to the diplomacy of the cloister. 

In spite of all the airs of grandeur which upstarts will assume, there is always 
some flaw in their manners to betray the blemish of their origin. A shopkeeper 
may buy a country seat and a title ; he may be surrounded by excellent friends, his 
very humble servants ; but just as he assumes a dignified attitude proper for his 
rank, a false move exposes his native infirmities. The citizen-king will always be 



214 THE CANONESS. 

more a citizen than a king. Nothing engages the Canoness more than this con- 
stant battle with her own early recollections ; this attempt to foil and forget her 
past life. As far as the surface goes, she succeeds pretty well ; but in the inner 
recesses of the heart some impressions remain which it is less easy to efface ; and 
she has a bump on her forehead which she inherits from the craniological system of 
the family. Her hereditary vice is a vulgar passion for the Stock-Exchange. 
Every day her stock-broker is closetted with her, to calculate the rival influences 
of Bulls and Bears. It has been suspected that conferences of so secret a nature 
might conceal other mysteries than those of the three per cents. The coquette cared 
but little for the report, because such scandal only told in her favour : the 
passion which was attributed to her heart served to disguise the passion of avarice 
which corroded her mind. Nevertheless, we are informed by the best authority 
that the stock-broker came and went for no other purpose in life but the movement 
of her Ladyship's stocks, and we would fain believe it. 

In the first days of her titular distinctions, the Canoness was fastidious, and 
would let none but names of distinction cross her threshold : but the people of qua- 
lity were as fastidious as herself, and turned up their noses at her invitations. She 
soon knew what to do : coquettes have always a sort of bastard pride which pro- 
tects them from insult, by preventing them from feeling it ; and she lost no time in 
filling up the places of her supercilious neighbours with artists, men of letters, and 
men of leisure, who acknowledged her hospitality by the deference they paid to her 
person. Surrounded by this jovial circle of independent guests, the Canoness pre- 
sides at her table, with sufficient grace to give conversation the spur, and sufficient 
ease to let wits wander at their will. The stores of her coquetry are all opened at 
table : she invites the appetite of the gourmand ; she whispers sentiment to the 
poet ; and she talks of the march of intellect to the philosophical radical : she has 
something agreeable for every one about her, without omitting a slight fillip of 
devotion, which goes straight to the ears of the chaplain, without being stopped on 
the way by the sceptics, who are all engaged in the culinary rites of that temple 
where Vatel was a priest. At no period of her existence does the coquette more 
completely dissemble the vulgar cravings of nature : a syllabub, an orange jelly, or 
a spunge biscuit, form the basis of her meal, and even these light comestibles are 
swallowed in fragments so small, and at moments so adroitly chosen, that the 
majority of her guests are convinced she lives upon air. The Canoness protests 
that she subsists on spiritual food, and the careless are amused by a system of 
privation which is intended to put upon them a slight delusion. It is true, that in 
the evening, and in her own room, the Canoness makes amends for the abstemious 
rigour of her coquetry, by a substantial repast ; but the men who amuse themselves 
by making a poetic idol of such women, are more apt to applaud her for dissimu- 
lation as a tribute to themselves, than to censure it as an absurdity in her conduct. 

Among these gentlemen, it cannot be supposed but that the Canoness has one 
or more favourites. She has that Christian precept by heart, " She hath loved 
much, and much shall be forgiven her :" and she is too well versed in feminine pri- 
vileges not to have, at least for show, two or three admirers. The number is generally 
limited to three ; one by choice, a common sort of man, whom she loves, and who 
bullies her ; a second for vanity, some poet who adores her, and whom she rules 



THE CANONESS. 215 

with a rod of iron ; a third for fashion's sake, a man of the world, whom she 
thinks she can cajole, and who makes love for sheer diversion. She is fond with 
the first, prudish with the second, coquettish with the third : and yet her three 
caprices would not make up the tenderness of one woman's honest love. 

All this easy independence and complete freedom of life, however, belong to the 
early years of the religious profession of the Canoness. Somewhat later she adopts 
her part to the costume she wears, and assumes the language of a saint ; but this 
metamorphosis does not take place without a gradual and well-prepared transition. 
A disappointment first makes her turn up her eyes to heaven : the desertion of a 
lover throws her on her knees ; and the decline of her charms reminds her of a 
future state. She consults her mirror day after day, to learn whether she is still to 
cling to the world, or wholly to turn to Heaven. The slightest wrinkle on her 
brow will provoke a sigh for her transgressions ; a strange mark on the cheek will 
rekindle the fervour of her piety ; a grey hair would cast her prostrate at the foot 
of the altar. The workings of grace are indubitably effective. 

Certain changes then take place in the people about her, and in the general 
aspect of the house. The gay young gentlemen of yesterday find that their jokes 
are now too loud ; and, one after another, they disappear. Amelia becomes more 
shrewd, and more retired ; the maitre-d'hotel looks extremely grave ; and the 
femme-de-chambre grows reserved. It often happens that in the morning hours 
which the Canoness devotes in her boudoir to dress and devotion, a begging-nun 
steals across the dining-rooms to win a trifle for her convent from this new child 
of grace ; for, in the religious world, news flies fast. 

But the Devil still occupies the position ; he retains, by a thousand cherished 
enjoyments and agreeable enticements, the mastery of the heart : the surface, 
indeed, is made over to Heaven ; but there is a balance of power. 

This sort of compromise between the church and the world makes the position of 
the Canoness still more equivocal. One morning (it was Shrove Monday), she 
was lolling on her couch, and discussing with Amelia the preparations for a masked 
ball, to which the two friends were to go incog, that very evening. — " Good 
Heavens," cried the Canoness, "there's eleven o'clock striking, and Madame 
Leroy promised me my dress before ten. Take your pen, my dear, there's not an 
instant to lose." Amelia sits down to the sofa-table to pen the important de- 
spatch, upon which the pleasures of the evening depend. At the same moment the 
door opens, and a shrill voice is heard to exclaim, " Heaven preserve your 
Ladyship ! " 

The Canoness. — Ah ! 'tis you, Sister Therese ; how are our dear sister Ursulines, 
and our worthy Abbess. (Aside to Amelia). — Make haste, my dear, with the note. 

Sister Therese. — Your Ladyship does us too much honour ; all our dear flock is 
quite well ; we have only to deplore .... 

The Canoness. — I understand you ; the world is grown so wicked that the flame 
of charity, the first of Christian virtues, has become extinct. (Aside to Amelia). — 
Be sure you tell her how to trim the body with Brussels point. — Sister, the fewer 
charitable souls there are, the harder is the task of those that remain. 

Sister Therese. — Ah ! my Lady! the precepts of the Gospel seem to be for- 
gotten ; knock where we will, no one opens ; seek where we will, we do not find. 



216 THE CANONESS. 

The Canoness. — Indeed, Sister, we live in cruel times. (Aside to Amelia). — 
'Tis a dress for a Queen of Love and Beauty. — We must submit to the will of 
Providence. — The stomacher in cloth of gold. — Better days will come : truth will 
prevail. — A train, my dear. — And our Holy Mother Church will regain all her 
splendour. — Low on the shoulders, you know. 

Sister There se. — Heaven grant what your Ladyship says may come true ! 

The Canoness. — Gustavus must be of the party. — But, my Sister, I shall not 
confine myself to mere expressions of sympathy. — You can bring him with you. — I 
will do what I can. — How angry the Marchioness will be. — I can give but little. — 
Don't let it seem as if we gave him a rendezvous, for the world. — But that little I 
give with all my heart. 

The Canoness gets up, draws on a silken slipper, and gives her purse with its 
slender contents to Sister Therese, who makes her bow and retires in all humility, 
whilst the two friends finish their epistle. 

A few months elapse after this scene, and, for the first time in her life, the 
Canoness falls really and desperately in love — in love with one who is ruthlessly 
laid hold of by a fairer, a younger, and a richer rival. Then, indeed, her spite 
drives her outright into extreme devotion. She takes a younger confessor, and 
keeps him for the rest of her life. She consults him every hour of the day ; she 
learns from him the sweets of repentance, and sheds in his bosom her penitential 
sighs. Closetted together the whole of the day, they spend their time in ascetic 
meditations ; they mingle their prayers ; and the converted Canoness lives but for 
faith in the one Church. The days of the dinner parties and the supper parties 
are fled for ever. The stock -broker is seen no more. Amelia is dismissed. No 
one remains but the Confessor — sole arbiter of her spiritual and temporal affairs. 
His sacred jealousy keeps the profane aloof; his pastoral care shuts up the lamb in 
the fold, lest it stray. Who can describe the holy grief of that afliicted heart ? the 
pious ecstacy, the scalding tears, the cruel self-mortification of this Samaritan ? 
Who can penetrate into the mysteries of the oratory, where the two souls are inter- 
fused by the intensity of their penitence, and the enchanting joys of spiritual 
consolation ? 

The atmosphere of Paris is too impure for the converted sinner : the noise of the 
world she once loved so well may still reach her ear. The Confessor orders her to 
make a pilgrimage to Rome, and the Canoness goes, like another Magdalen, to fall 
at the feet of His Holiness the Pope. Escorted by her spiritual guide, watched by 
him, protected by him, she has the buckler of the faith always girt about her. In 
this guise she will visit half the convents in Italy, and edify the sisterhood by the 
vehemence of her contrition. Doubtless she will end her days in one of those 
calm and holy havens—unless she meet some unhappy German prince, some lost 
sheep of the flock of Cobourg, who will consent to exchange his illustrious name 
for her fortune. That would be to end as she would fain have begun. 




THE COUNTRY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES. 



BY ECAENOT. 




Rien n'est plus neglige que l'educatiou des filles; la 
le caprice des meres y decident souvent de tout. — FKNcmn, 

FTER the prosy speeches of the mayor, and the or- 
chestra of a country playhouse, the most laughable 
W i/y ^ vk thing in the world is a Young Ladies' Boarding School. 

We will suppose a town containing from five to ten 
thousand inhabitants, long and narrow, with a White- 
hart hotel and reading-rooms, a commissary of police, 
game-keepers, lamps that give no light, streets half 
pavement half mud, a municipal drummer, and the 
usual quantum of female gossips and scandalmongers : 
these last purveying for the edification of the parents, as the Boarding School 
does for that of the children ; murdering reputations with the story of the day, as 
the Boarding School tortures the ears with Le Ragois' history of France; destroying 
confidence in the dearest of friends, as the school destroys the happiest dispositions 
with its system of instruction. Just inform us about the battle of Tolbiac ; in 
what year was it fought ? Come. 

And when the little girls know about the battle of Tolbiac, and in what year it 
was fought, and a great many other equally interesting facts, tney return to their 
village. Well, it is really wonderful ! 

Not that they do not learn other things than these. On the contrary, education 
at the present day has the arms of a giant, and embraces everything ; no matter 
the rank, the fortune, or the natural intelligence of the pupil, — everybody is taught 

F F 



218 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES. 

everything : the daughter of the pastry-cook is taught literary composition ; the 
labourer's daughter, logical analysis; the shoemaker's daughter, astronomy; the 
tanner's daughter, the art of poetry. Over and above all this, in order to form 
economical, sensible, and useful housewives, they have the toilette of Venus after 
her birth, and the fancies of Vulcan after his marriage ; the functions of Mercury 
the messenger, and of Ganymede the cup-bearer of the Gods ; and the countless 
decencies of the heathen mythology. There are the dog of Alcibiades, and the 
she- wolf of Romulus ; the moral story of Lucretia under the Tarquins ; the gladi- 
ators publicly rubbed with oil ; lectures on love in cuirass and helmet ; the secret 
initiations of the priests of antiquity, and the monkish austerities of modern pontiffs ; 
and all this because, they tell us, history, when written with truth and simplicity, 
tends to enlarge both the heart and the understanding of youth. — Much good may 
it do your wives ! 

To endeavour to furnish children with principles of order, economy, and manage- 
ment, in these establishments, no one dreams ; — to prepare and predispose them 
to become amiable and cheerful mothers of families ; enlightened, attached, and 
devoted companions ; indulgent and disinterested friends, no one attempts ; — to 
eradicate all germs of meanness, selfishness, and falsehood, which cause them to 
grow up narrow-minded, meddling, story-telling, quarrelsome creatures, still less; — 
to develope and foster, when they happen to exist, high, noble, and generous ideas, 
which might preserve them from envy, hatred, malice, and all the hideous leprosy 
of the heart, — nonsense; — b-a, ba; b-e, be; b-i, bi; b-u, bu ; the participle agrees 
with the rule, when the rule is before the verb ; — in six days, God created the 
heavens and the earth, and rested on the seventh day ; — the sons of Charlemagne 
were named John, Peter, Paul, and Louis ; — the Fox and the Crow, a fable ; — a 
hundred eggs at a hundred sous, what is that a dozen ? — hold yourself up, miss ; 
and . . . — that's all. 

All this costs about three hundred and eighty francs a year, exclusive of bedding, 
towels, &c, seats at church, accomplishment-masters, and broken windows. — By 
the by, here is a history of broken windows, — it is but a short one. 

When I was living in the country, I was requested to pay for the schooling of 
the daughter of one of my friends, who was obliged to preserve a strict incognito, 
from some motive quite foreign to the present story. The child was of a mildness 
quite angelic, and afforded her anonymous parent all the joy and satisfaction he 
could desire, with the exception of one particular. The quarterly account always 
presented a supplementary item of from eight to ten broken windows. This was 
extraordinary, — at least it appeared to me very extraordinary. I went to the mis- 
tress, hat in hand, and expressed my astonishment. Having seated ourselves 
opposite each other, " Sir," said she, " I have thirty sous worth of windows broken 
every month ; every body tells me that it is Miss Hortense who does it, — therefore, 
it must be she ;" upon which I retired, ruminating upon hammer and block. 

This, however, is seen in the hours of recreation and walking, both in schools 
and the world. The hammer holding himself proudly up, and talking both loud 
and fast, fixing the different amusements, and changing them as he pleases, settling 
the bridle, and never hesitating to make use of the whip, hurrying to and fro, 
shouting, pushing, and jostling, but after all a good-hearted fellow at bottom. You 



THE COUNTRY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES. 219 

have doubtless seen him often. It is he who makes a noise in school time, and then 
declares that it is Josephine. It is he who hides all the pens and pretends to look for 
them, muttering all the while, " It is impossible to do anything here." It is he 
who gets up in the night time and mixes the shoes, does all the mischief, tells tales, 
repeats anecdotes, and performs practical jokes, shouts, runs, elbows, tumbles 
down himself and upsets every body else, while the poor block humbly bends his 
back, cries in a corner, copies out pages, and pays for the broken windows. Deny 
it if you can. 

You will see, during the hours of recreation in these establishments, a small 
group giggling very mysteriously : these are the great girls. When the mistress 
makes her appearance, they either disperse or laugh out loud. They have either a 
secret or a lover, — it is such capital fun, and then it vexes the Teacher, especially 
if she does not happen to have one herself. The correspondence is carried on in 
common, and signed, " Your affectionate and faithful friend till death." They see 
the favoured one either at the gate of the school, when they are out walking, at 
church, or in their dreams. While one is writing to him, the other is on the 
watch. They generally conceal the letters in their stockings, and the lock of the 
loved one's hair in one of their shoes. It prevents the time from hanging heavy on 
their hands. Depend upon it, when a girl of seventeen years of age is content to 
remain at school, it is a certain sign that it is no longer a proper place for her. 

And how should it be otherwise ? Subtract love and marriage from litera- 
ture, and what remains ? — banish them from mythology, and what will you 
have left ? Every thing is included in them ; they are, as it were, universal life. 
And tell me, if you can, the exact line of demarcation that separates the heart of 
a girl from that of a woman. Clothed in mystery, yet betrayed on every side, the 
secret declares and reveals itself, in defiance of all vain attempts at concealment. 
Instead of describing life as it really is, abounding in devotion and sacrifices, they 
deliver it over to the imagination overflowing with honey and crowned with roses ; 
and when the too ardent mind of youth withers and wastes away, and a too pre- 
cocious maturity arrives, then, and not till then, the second, and alas ! the true 
knowledge of life is attained. 

To follow out the precept and furnish an example ; — the school-mistress is young, 
and gets married. Increase and multiply, is the evangelical advice ; and intellectual 
development being the end and aim of education, as marriage is that of nature, it 
singularly advances the ideas of young people. It is as well to know while we 
are young, what we are to expect. 

Generally speaking, the school-mistress marries an usher, of tolerably good ap- 
pearance, or a non- spectacled professor of classics. It is he who undertakes the 
first class, and teaches arithmetic. When the big girls are very big, and the 
professor in good health, the Mistress is generally present at the lessons. It pre- 
vents inattention, and doubles the superintendence. Girls are inquisitive, and 
mathematicians abstracted, — at least they say so ; and young married women are not 
fond of abstraction. " Take four from four, nothing remains ; now have the good- 
ness, miss, to look at your tables." 

Very often the School-mistress has studied either English or Italian ; very rarely 
French, of which she makes the same use as the "Bourgeois Gentilhomme" does of 



220 



THE COUNTRY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES. 



prose. That is the talent of it. To teach what one knows is difficult ; to teach 
that of which one knows nothing, is pretty : hence it happens that the French, the 
queen of living languages, is spoken in the provinces with that delicacy of inflection, 
purity of tone, and softness of pronunciation, which metamorphoses it into Russian, 
Flemish, Celtic, Ostrogothic, or, indeed, anything that you please. 

Do not, for a moment, suppose that people, either from taste or choice, devote 
themselves freely and deliberately to education. Do not imagine, that the sacred 
task of instruction, — the basis of the social structure,— has either been understood, 
or even considered ; that the accomplishment of so arduous a task has been diffi- 
dently assumed, and firmly persevered in ; that by long and profound study, the 
parties have qualified themselves to hold in their hands the future honour, happiness, 
and respectability of families. Nothing of the kind. It is only when the grocery or 
linendrapery business has failed, or agricultural affairs have been unsuccessful, that a 
school is immediately established. It's all very natural. Will you take a prospectus ? 
Some one has remarked that two-thirds of the Boarding Schools for Young 
Ladies are kept by reduced families. It is a sort of privy council*, of an honourable 
description, — a kind of a b c d-arian peerage. Consequently, the school-mistress 
never fails to be dressed in the ultra fashion. She proceeds to market with a 
Cashmere, to church in a hat and feathers, to the promenade with a parasol ; she 
has white hands, well-cut nails, hair in braids, and a largish figure. Her servant 
wears a white apron w^ith pockets, and wooden shoes, which she deposits at the 
door of the drawing-room. 

In the event of any visits, the children are delighted. " Well, I do declare, it's 
Felicie's mamma; where did she buy her dress ? " "She must be going to take 
Felicie away, and place her at a large school in Paris. I should like to go to 
Paris myself, just to see it." " Nonsense, you don't suppose that they have the 
means." " Well, papa has promised to take me there in the holidays, if I get a 
prize." And when the visit is ended, they get up and make their courtesy as 
pertly as possible. Good manners are certain tests of a good education. 

This is also the reason why music is taught at the Boarding School, — the piano, 

the guitar, and singing. Fifteen minutes 
every other day, and the grand piece before 
the parents. In a general way, the music- 
master of the district, a tall, dark, thin 
figure of a man, somewhat facetious, and 
a capital fellow in company, gives lessons 
on the piano ; he is an excellent clarionet 
and bass-fiddle player ; a good hand at bil- 
liards, and such-like games ; taking snuff, 
however, and prodigious quantities of it. 
He imparts to his pupils facility in finger- 
ing, simplicity in the movements, and the 
graceful ease of the position, — for this 
reason, the professor at ten francs a lesson 




* Retired Secretaries of State in France, were, previously to 1830, admitted to a seat in the 
Privy Council, with a salary. 



THE COUNTRY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES. 



221 



dances his hands about, jumps his elbows, and distorts his dorsal column at the 
risk of breaking it. He likewise inculcates the proper value of time, the harmony 
of the passages, the magic of the effects, and the sympathy of animation ; this 
accounts for the little witches playing flat, counting incorrectly, murdering one's 
ears, and sending one to sleep. 

Add to this, that the unfortunate beings, executioners and victims, have lost not 
only the days of their youth, but the money of their parents, without pleasure or 
profit. Music, as an accomplishment, is a pest, — as an amusement, a jewel. Only 
suppose a woman, seated at her piano, with four squalling brats, her husband 
out of temper, her cook robbing her, her linen and plate disappearing. Can you 
even, with the aid of a microscope, find the proper place of C natural in such a hurly- 
burly as this, which is miscalled an establishment — a family — a household ? 

There are many good respectable mothers of families, living in the fear of God 
and the hatred of sin, possessed, moreover, of some good common sense, who, 
notwithstanding, imagine that the sum-total of a good education consists in music. 
There are not a few of these. They are not aware — good, worthy old souls — that 
the cultivation of notes hastens, and singularly hastens too, the physical develope- 
ment. There is something so sympathetic in the harmony of sounds, which fills 
the heart with feelings of melancholy, and causes it to unburden itself. The notes, 
the instruments, the voices blend, or, as it were, marry together ; and the heart 
seeks to imitate them. The long hours passed at the piano are devoted partly 
to study, partly to meditation — a meditation, indeed, of the future. The vibration 
of the strings is felt long after it has ceased to be audible to the ear ; and the soft 
language of approbation, the tender tones of flattery, soften and penetrate the breasts 
of the most guileless and innocent. The key of G opens the door of the heart ; the 
piano is the hot-bed of love. Close the doors, tender mothers, and look to the windows. 

After the music, comes the dancing and the drawing, the drilling and the 
uniform, — farces that take wondrously well with 
the world at large. The dancing-master is, how- 
ever, a being sui generis, unknown to Buffon, 
and undescribed by Balzac. A pair of pumps, 
a kit, and an avant deux, and you have the 
man. Uttering, at a certain hour, the identical 
words, and repeating the airs of the day before. 
" Now ladies, in your places, if you please. I am 
going to play you a new tune. Make your 
courtesies, &c." He comes with a laugh, and 
departs with a smile. He has just been walking 
seven miles ; and is now going to proceed seven 
miles farther, to give a lesson for thirty sous. 
Cultivate the fine arts, and try to make a living 
by them, — do. 

The refectory and the dormitory, — the keeping-in after school hours and the 
dunce's cap, — the punishment-task that teaches nothing, and the distribution of 
prizes that shows that nothing worth mentioning has been taught, still remain to 
be noticed. This last is a charming little recreation, interspersed with farcical 




.^.i ,,- A'. •" 'O 



222 



THE COUNTRY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES. 



ceremonies, diabolical music, critical whisperings, and laurel crowns which fall over 
the nose. Then the pride, pomp, and circumstance of the Boarding-school are to be 
found in their greatest glory. Then are to be seen the farmer's wife in her green 
bonnet, the fine lady in her aristocratic mantilla, the committee of instruction in 
black coats, the curate in his robes, and the mayor in his scarf. There you see 
Buffon, Bouilli, and La Fontaine, respectively bound in grey, blue, and yellow 
morocco. You see, in fact, everything but that which you would be most delighted 
to witness, — modest, reserved, diffident children. 

Over and above all this, there is the Teacher. The Teacher is the corner 
stone of the building, — at once the base and the summit of the Boarding-school. 
She occupies the middle rank between the pupil whom she scolds, and the mistress 
whom she toadies. Invisible and unknown in the first period of her life, she bursts 
suddenly into existence in the second, and disappears as suddenly in the third. 
Child of chance or necessity, she leaves the stage-coach at twelve o'clock, and 
enters upon her functions in the lower school-room at three. Her luggage consists 
of a trunk, a pasteboard box, and Strasburg shoes ; her stock of literature is not by 
any means so ponderous; her natoe is Emily, Jenny, or Lucy, — never anything else. 

At school until her eighteenth year, the Teacher has just lost her father or her 
fortune, not unfrequently both. She writes an English hand, can manage to pick 
out a sonata on the piano-forte, and ties the ribbons of her bonnet close under her 
chin. In company — for she goes into company — she is reserved, talks upon litera- 
ture or domestic matters, soaks her biscuit in water, and rumples her napkin ; she 
speaks thick, but seldom. 

When the School-mistress is paying a visit or at market, the Teacher talks very 
loudly, scolds the housemaids, dresses her hair in the drawing-room, receives the 
parents, and makes the report. She expatiates upon the progress of the child, falls 
into raptures of admiration at its extraordinary abilities, explains the system of in- 
struction, and predicts crowns and prizes. " Education here," she says, " is con- 
ducted in playing." Then she cries out, through the door, " Be so good, ladies, 
as to hold your tongues, will you. — Noise," she continues, " quite kills me : 
solitude and the open fields, — there are my affections." The mamma is the wife of 
a farmer who owns eight ploughs: she jumps the child up and down upon her knee, 
and calls her " her duck." 

In school-hours, the Teacher walks up and down, speaks abruptly, her head 
quite back, and her foot firmly planted on the ground. She says, " Paris, depart- 
ment of the Seine." If any one is passing by the half-opened door, she says, in a 
louder tone, " Paris, what department ?" and when a child answers, " In the Pas 
de Calais," " Good heavens !" she cries, " how stupid you are." — Her thumb and 
forefinger are generally bedaubed with ink. 

Occasionally, the Teacher has a fixed study : she is learning English, — Kelipso 
coude not hi commeforted. Then she bends herself over her desk, casts a stern and 
severe look at the little girls, whom she forthwith determines to keep in, wets her 
thumb, turns over the leaves of her dictionary, and reclines her head upon her left 
hand : they call this " sapping," at college. Copying out songs is another of her 
occupations. 

On the Thursdays, the Teacher takes the children out for a walk. Poor, pretty 






THE COUNTRY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES. 223 

little creatures ! deprived of a mother's tenderness and caresses at the very age 
when they are rendered doubly dear, from being returned with such delightful in- 
terest ; weaned from the sweet pleasures of family affection, — pleasures of so 
cheering a nature that no future cares or misery can efface the remembrance that 
they leave; rudely torn from the bosom of a mother, on which the griefs, the pains, 
the misfortunes, and the passions of childhood are so calmly and so successfully 
soothed to sleep ! The Teacher takes them out, and makes them walk two by 
two : it looks military. Her brother is serjeant in a dragoon regiment, and plays 
upon the flute. This is one reason why she has a peculiar liking for the local 
music-master, the before-mentioned tall dark man. 

Out walking, the Teacher looks serious, — it has a good effect ; she walks in 
the rear, by the side of the very clumsiest girl in the school, — this is politic. In her 
left hand she carries a book, always the same one ; her right hand indicates the 
direction. When the girls play at blind-man's-buff, she reads under the shade of an 
oak, an elm, or an apple-tree, — the apple-tree is classical. She looks at the passers-by, 
and smiles, — it does not in the least compromise her, and might lead to something. 
If a child is running, and happens to fall down, she says, " Served her right." If 
there is any one present, she takes her upon her knee, kisses her, calls her a poor, 
dear little angel, and says, " Never mind." — This is methodical. 

On her return from the walk, to please the children, she accompanies them to a 
place where dancing is going forward. As for herself, she never dances : she will 
not be out of mourning till next month, and then the orchestra is worse than street 
music. She makes the girls keep closer in the ranks, looks over all the heads, bows 
at a distance, starts running like a mad thing, comes in last, stops at the door, and 
finally looks about to see whether anybody has followed her. 

At church, the Teacher walks at the head of the ranks, the Mistress follows in 
the rear. Her superintendence is of the most active description : she turns round 
every minute to get a better view of her pupils. The signals for sitting down at 
the Credo, for the kneeling at the Agnus Dei, the contemplation of the Lever Dieu, 
and the trembling of the Ite missa est, all come from her seat. She hums the 
canticle, turns over the leaves of her illustrated mass-book once or twice, never 
more, and presents the holy water to the little ones. 

Her in-door occupations are prodigiously numerous and important. The rising in 
the morning, the lessons, the play-hours, the meals, and the visits, each in its 
turn demands her attention. She superintends the dresses, inspects the hands, 
mends the pens, and distributes the copies. At table, she corrects the grace, passes 
the salt, crumbles her bread, counts the walnuts, and is the first to rise. She is 
finishing a novel. 

The vacations are to the Teacher what an unexpected legacy would be to any 
poor, half- starved creature. An orphan, and without the smallest sign of any 
traceable relations until September arrives, when they spring from the earth like 
asparagus after rain. She discovers that she has an uncle in Dordogne, an aunt in 
Lorraine, a guardian at Fontainebleau, and a cousin at Paris. She is going to 
spend a month in Paris. 

The return after the holidays produces an extraordinary influence upon the 
Teacher. Affable and communicative during the last fortnight, she returns stern 



224 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES. 

and ill-tempered ; she neither laughs nor pardons ; she must have silence and soli- 
tude, punishments and letters. " Has any one seen the postman ? — has the post- 
man been round yet ? — who has seen the postman ?" If there are no letters from 
Paris, she contracts her lips, wrinkles her forehead, and the lower class look and 

tremble. " Here, Ma'am, is a letter that " " Give it me, you little silly." 

There, now she is reading it, beaming with smiles : and, like a widow who forgets 
her tears in her new head-dress, the Teacher wraps herself up in her recollections, 
and shuts her past pleasures in her desk. 

At the piano, when by chance she resigns herself to it, the Teacher is ill- 
tempered : she knows nothing by heart, the instrument is out of tune, and the tuner 
never comes to his time. If you press her, and you have passed your thirtieth year, 
she gives you a sly glance, and a variation of " Clair de la lune." Talk to her 
about arietta or ballad, Tyrolienne or barcarolle, she declares that Plantade is dull, 
Puget monotonous, Levassor uninteresting, and Polak positively stupifying. 

Fortunately, the mother of a pupil who is in want of some necessary artL d of 
attire arrives, and the Teacher accompanies her to the dress-maker's. The dress- 
maker's shop is at once the Paradise and the Purgatory of the Teacher. She there 
does penance for all the vanities that she dares not nurture, all the desires she is un- 
able to satisfy. There she lives, her muscles have full play, her eyes repose, her 
hands act ; she talks about lace, overturns the boxes, forgets the child, and treats 
herself to a mantilla, for which she promises to pay next quarter. 

On the 1st of January, she either receives a new-year's -gift or a complimentary 
ode. In a general way, the Teacher prefers the tangible and positive to the 
idealities of poetry. The latter, however, being much more economical, the father 
of one of the little girls, member of some unknown academy, and editor of the 
newspaper of the district, composes some verses ; the child learns them by heart, 
and recites, in a pleasing manner, what follows : — 

" How oft has the love we have wish'd to display- 
To a dearly-prized tutress and friend, 
Been check'd by departure, while we as we may 
With our sorrows are left to contend. 

" We're but young, it is true, but we're able to feel 
And appreciate kindness and love ; 
And for blessings upon you, whenever we kneel, 
Pray to God and the Virgin above. 

" For when we were naughty, you bade us repent, 
Or like a fond mother have chid ; 
And without wicked murmur, or sad discontent, 
Have taught us to do as we're bid. 

" Thus we hope you will pardon this simple address, 
As our feelings it seeks to convey ; 
For we were embolden'd for once to express 
The affection we feel every day." 

Hereupon the little girls cry, the Teacher cries, the servants cry too, and every- 
body is pleased. Reader, are you so too ? 




THE DEPUTY. 



BY EUGENE BRIFFAULT. 




~p" APPILY I have not to portray a political character ! 

I was educated with Auguste de * * *, but since 
leaving college we have been placed by circumstances 
in very different spheres of life. It has been my fate to 
be thrown, much against my will, in the diurnal con- 
flict of the political press, with no other protection and 
fortune than my pen ; while my early friend's life, free 
from the turmoil of politics, was quietly gliding on in 
his native province and the demesne of his fathers. 
After his classical education was completed, he had 
leisure to reflect perfectly at his ease how it would best suit him to enter the world. 
He was in no hurry, and took his time, till one day he coolly said to himself, " I 
should like to be a Deputy." He was then thirty-six years of age. 

When I learnt his determination, I was at first surprised, and then anxious ; but 
I soon became aware that, on account of his extensive property in the district for 
which he offered himself as a candidate, Auguste could command powerful interest 
and sufficient influence to secure his return in spite of all competitors. I accord- 
ingly looked forward to his nomination with confidence. 

Auguste was elected, two years ago, Deputy for the arrondissement of * * *. 
On his arrival in Paris he called upon me. He was almost afraid of what he had 
dared to undertake. The formidable honour, once obtained, preyed on his mind. 

G G 



226 



THE DEPUTY. 



He was nervous and agitated, and looked up to me for advice ; he seemed to be as 
giddy as if suddenly conveyed to the top of a lofty monument. I tried to compose 
him as well as I could, not daring to laugh at his terrors ; for symptoms of gratified 
vanity shone through his fear, making it manifest that he was not a little proud of 
his dignity. 

He frequently repeated his calls for some time after, anxious to consult with me 
about his line of conduct ; but it was not long ere he offered me his patronage. 

A complete change, certainly rapid, if not sudden, came over my friend's manners. 
He speedily got rid of his natural timidity, I had almost said, his modesty ; and I 
was never more struck by the powerful effect of the elective mandate, than when I 
saw how quickly it enlarged the intellectual faculties of my honourable friend, his 
talent for observation, his foresight, and, above all, his ability as a leader. A month 
had not yet elapsed, and I no longer recognised in Auguste the same man I had 
shortly before seen so frightened by his new duties, and so anxious to discharge 
them creditably. Auguste had already acquired perfect self-confidence. On his 
first visits, he had spoken with great humility of what he wished to obtain from 
Government for his native district ; soon afterwards, he expatiated with energy on 
sundry improvements required in his department. Now, the interest and happiness 
of France were uppermost in his thoughts, and views and projects embracing the 
whole world, often engrossed his mind. It is right to add, that these extended 
views of general politics effectually banished from his memory his pledges to forward 
and support the local interests of his constituents, as he used to call the elective 
body of his district. 

Struck more and more every day by his wonderful progress, I fancied that he 
devoted all his leisure, after the performance of his parliamentary duties, to pro- 
found research and a course of severe study of the more important questions, thus 
preparing himself for political eminence— the secret object of his parliamentary am- 
bition. In fact, his small apartment, in one of the quiet hotels of the Rue de Beaune, 
was littered with heaps of papers, prints, books, and pamphlets of every form and 
colour, at least as far as the covers went. I was lost in admiration and delight ; I 
hardly dared to touch with profane hand these treasures of science and knowledge, 
which were to contribute so much to the national prosperity. After some hesitation, 
I ventured to take up a pamphlet — its leaves were innocent of the paper knife ; — a 
book — it had never been read ; — a file of parliamentary papers — they were still in a 
virgin state. I asked Auguste what he intended to do with his treasures of political 
learning. " Why," said my honourable friend, as he finished his toilette, " the 
volumes and pamphlets you see in such profusion are chiefly parliamentary docu- 
ments distributed in the Chamber, or sent round to the Deputies. It was my wish 
to examine them with attention, as in duty bound ; but finding it impossible to 
peruse them all, I made up my mind to read none. However, we have in the 
Chamber lengthened conversations on all subjects, which is, after all, the best way 
of acquiring a thorough understanding of most questions. Conversation is superior 
to books. A clever orator discoursing is a living book. In this way, Casimir 
Perier received his political education." I was thunderstruck. The noblemen of 
the old school, those sons of illustrious dames, who knew everything without learn- 
ing anything, were not wont to pride themselves on their extensive reading. But, 



THE DEPUTY. 227 

certainly, they would have been puzzled to give so ingenious an excuse as my 
honourable friend. 

I was desirous to know a little more of the erudite conversations so successfully 
attended by Auguste. I followed him one day to the Palais Bourbon ; he went to 
one of the committee-rooms, and I took a seat in a public box. The debate was 
expected to be interesting, and the house was crowded. 

A stranger in the present Chamber of Deputies is most forcibly struck by the 
aspect of confusion and general medley. The physiognomy of the Chamber is 
always fluctuating, and one cannot distinguish any prominent feature. Previous to 
the Revolution of 1830, it was easy enough to determine the Deputy's leading 
characteristics. The age of forty, under which he could not be admitted, repre- 
sented his extreme youth ; the required qualification of forty pounds a year taxes, 
could only appertain to a man of some landed property ; and these two leading 
features showed at once the rich proprietor of mature age, impelled by a slight 
spark of ambition to leave his country-seat and transplant himself to the Parisian 
soil. With these first signs it was not difficult to connect others from the observa- 
tion of habits, manners, language, ideas, and even outward appearance, congenial to 
departed times. Some had belonged to the Empire, others bore the stamp of emi- 
gration ; in one were visible signs of long banishment, in another symptoms of 
regret, and in a third, rays of hope not extinguished. A few Deputies, whose 
aspect formed a remarkable exception, were the representatives of the present 
generation. Each class had its peculiar feature ; uniformity of costume was also 
of great assistance to the observer, and then the portrait of the French Deputy 
could be easily drawn. 

But all this is altered in the present day. The Deputy's years may range from 
thirty to the most advanced age ; though a property qualification is still enforced,* 
the Chamber is open nevertheless to the whole middle class, and the list of candi- 
dates includes intelligent men of all ranks and professions. Moreover, the fearful 
political events that have left every where indelible marks of their occurrence, are 
now no longer recent, and public men who bear their stamp are become exceptions. 
There is no longer an official costume, and nothing striking marks the Deputy's per- 
sonal appearance ; no external characteristics point him out to public curiosity, and 
he cannot be distinguished but by peculiar signs, perceptible only to keen observers. 

Deputies of grave deportment were not numerous among those who poured into the 
Chamber through every door. There is no reason to find fault with a Deputy simply 
because he is like everybody else, and it would be unjust to complain that representa- 
tives are separated by no outward distinction from their constituents ; yet I do not 
know how to account for it,though certain it is that we are almost vexed to see them 
too easily confounded with the common herd. There must be in our nature more 
aristocratic instinct and feeling of caste than we are generally inclined to admit. 

There is no difference between the Deputy of the Opposition and the Member 
seated on the ministerial benches. Observe that honourable gentleman yonder, still 
young, and dressed with peculiar care. His air is cold and solemn ; his carriage 
dignified, his gesture stiff, his countenance bears an habitual expression of contempt, 
and his whole demeanour is indicative of a disposition verging towards haughtiness. f 

* Every Member must pay at least twenty pounds per ann. taxes. f M. Odilon Barrot. 



228 THE DEPUTY. 

He is one of the most strenuous champions of equality. That Member whose dress 
is so simple, and who is distinguished by his frank and open countenance, his 
easy and courteous manner, and his animated yet benevolent language, is the great 
advocate of social distinctions.* Would you see the most eminent of our states- 
men ? Look at that little man, whose witty sallies enliven the group of Deputies 
collected round him.f He has all the majesty of a schoolboy. — There is a De- 
puty walking in. Mark his solemn costume, his important carriage, his meditative 
brow : one would think that the destiny of empires rests in his hands. He is, — no 
matter whom ; there is not a more idle Deputy in the whole Chamber ; he is known 
never to have taken the least part in any discussion. Shall I relate the circum- 
stances connected with his election ? They form a pleasant piece of parliamentary 
gossip. His stiff manners and pompous behaviour were a constant source of 
misery to his family ; he was at home a most severe and irremoveable censor, 
finding fault with everything, and delivering his eternal lectures in the most heavy 
and monotonous tone. At last the idea struck his wife, who is possessed of consi- 
derable landed property, that she could command sufficient interest to carry his 
election. Her scheme succeeded admirably, and the Chamber is now gratified with 
the sight of his frigid countenance, to the great relief of his family. 

The Chamber of Deputies contains only one class of persons conspicuous by their 
numbers — the Gentlemen of the Bar ; and, faithful to their origin, they take great 
care to remain barristers at the parliamentary rostrum. 

To return to my friend. Shortly afterwards I saw Auguste engaged with half- 
a-dozen members in lively conversation ; but they were all so merry, and 
laughing so heartily at each others' sallies, that I could not think they were dis- 
cussing politics. Moreover, each of the gay deputies was provided with an eye- 
glass, which he directed towards the ladies in the public boxes, and they were 
evidently at some pains to show that their attention was engrossed by the fair por- 
tion of the audience. The precautions were, however, quite unnecessary ; for no 
one would have taken them for political characters. After the adjournment of the 
debate, I went to seek Auguste, resolved to ask for some explanation. In the lobby 
of the House, Deputies were collected in groups, some arranging dinner parties, 
others discussing the merits of pictures lately exhibited ; in the library, many were 
reading ; loud laughing was heard in the refreshment-room ; and in the hall, an 
animated discussion was going on relative to a young cantatrice. I persisted in 
thinking that Auguste could not be taking part in any of these futile proceedings, 
and not looking for him among either of these groups, I was unable to find him. 

In the evening I went to the opera. The first person I saw there was Auguste. 
His morning costume in the Chamber was that of a young dandy : now I found 
him dressed like a grave magistrate. He was standing in the Foyer, surrounded 
by a circle of a dozen persons, and directly he saw me he beckoned me to approach, 
without interrupting the conversation, which related to one of the most interesting 
questions of the politics of the day. 

Auguste seemed to me to be threatened by some terrible crisis : he was gloomy, 
and evidently preoccupied ; his whole appearance betrayed his inward agitation. 
He had received letters from the country ; his constituents were disappointed with 
* M. Berryer. f M. Thiers. 



THE DEPUTY. 229 

him, and vexed to look in vain for the report of his speeches. Many questioned 
his abilities, while others ascribed his silence to the unsteadiness of his political 
opinions. There was no means to avoid it : the time was come when he must speak. 

To say the truth, notwithstanding my friend's exposition of principles of political 
economy on the hustings — notwithstanding his professions of attachment to the cause 
of progressive reform, and to the general interests of the country, and his sanguine 
and decided support of many generous Utopias, he had only sought a stepping- 
stone for a brilliant introduction to Parisian society. He knew that, once returned 
a Deputy, he would be well received everywhere, and placed at once on a good 
footing ; he was certain to acquire a personal value and a real influence, as he would 
at least have the disposal of a vote, and a vote is a thing in constant demand, 
which entitles its possessor to great respect. The Count de * * *, a young 
diplomatist who had been returned before him for a neighbouring district, had 
frequently told Auguste that, in the drawing-rooms of Paris, Deputies were treated 
with the most flattering distinction. This consideration, and of course his love of 
public good, had decided Auguste at once to offer himself as a candidate. Now he 
was rather disappointed to find a troublesome duty interfere with his charming 
arrangements for his Parisian life. A bill closely affecting the local interests of his 
constituency was about to come under discussion. Nothing could justify his silence 
on such a question : and he came to the determination of making his maiden speech. 

To me his anxiety was utterly unaccountable, and I was confounded by his 
sudden return of modesty, bordering on fear, and far exceeding his former timidity. 
What was become of his self-confidence, and his immense stores of learning so 
easily acquired in his conversation with eminent men ! How on a sudden had dis- 
appeared those grounds of security on which he had so prided himself a few days 
before ? ... It is easily explained : — In the midst of his pre-occupations, Auguste's 
vanity had misled him, but he still retained his good sense, and was now 
fully conscious of his own inferiority. He could not help thinking of the young 
Deputies who, on their entrance into the House, had rushed straight to the ros- 
trum, there to sink into insignificance, like moths fluttering in the flame of a candle, 
and burning themselves to death in an instant. He could name all those provincial 
heroes, — those young glories of their department, — those country phoenixes, — who 
had sunk at once, hissed down by their audience and the public press. He remem- 
bered many of these ardent reformers so anxious for promoting public improve- 
ments, many fervent patriots and political dreamers sadly unsuccessful in their first 
attempt, and now buried in deserved obscurity. Hence his anxiety on the eve of 
the approaching trial, which was to determine his rank among his colleagues, and 
enable his constituents to pass judgment on him. Alas ! what vanity was percep- 
tible through all my friend's agitation. 

The composition of Auguste's extempore speech took him three days. In order 
to make himself perfectly its master, he recited it several times with and without 
the manuscript to the chairs in his apartment. I am tolerably conversant with 
parliamentary debates, and know how the most celebrated orators of the Chamber 
prepare to speak in public. I have seen one revise with his manuscript the printed 
report of one of his most admired improvisations. I have followed another delivering 
by heart a speech of my own composition. It was I who, during the last session, pro- 



230 THE DEPUTY. 

phesied that * * * would speak ere long, having remarked him carefully taking down 
for several weeks all the good things said in his presence. I have more than once 
noticed in his long walks a man, whose opinions have great authority in the house, 
laboriously preparing his speeches. None of the secrets of oratorical composition are 
unknown to me. Improvisation in the Chamber of Deputies and at public meetings 
has some analogy to friendship in the world. The name is common enough, but the 
article is very rare. Only a few powerful minds, some of them vivified by inspiration, 
others by a rare quickness united to great perspicuity, or by profound convictions, 
and various and extensive learning, are to be excepted from the sweeping sentence ; 
and it must be acknowledged that man has to contend with great difficulties in 
making effective use of the faculty of speech, bestowed on him to express, or, as 
some will have it, to conceal his thoughts. I was of some assistance to Auguste 
in this serious emergency. A last rehearsal took place in his apartment ; I per- 
sonated the honourable members, and imitated the best I could the different noises 
of the audience, from the hum of private conversations to the murmur of angry 
interruptions and the storm of indignant feelings. I advised my friend always 
to keep his manuscript at hand, to avoid the painful situation of that novice orator, 
who, being at a loss for ideas and words to express them, was abruptly told by 
the President (Dupin) to refer to his manuscript. Overwhelmed with shame and 
confusion, the abashed orator immediately descended from the rostrum. 

The next day Auguste, prepared for all contingencies, ascended the rostrum, and 
delivered his speech without any hesitation and most accurately. Nobody paid 
the least attention to it ; the Chamber was very thin, the President had just 
taken the chair, and my honourable friend was only listened to by a few ladies, 
whom he had favoured with tickets for the grand occasion, and were, with myself, the 
only persons in the secret of the forthcoming debut. 

I felt anxious to know the sensations of the new orator, rather expecting an 
ostentatious display. To my great surprise, Auguste was humble and diffident. 
He confessed that the rostrum had seemed to him raised to an extraordinary eleva- 
tion ; that at first he felt giddy, his tongue was tied, his mouth parched, and with- 
out the assistance of the eau sucree he would have been unable to utter a syllable. 
His limbs trembled under him, and his feelings resembled the emotion ascribed by 
Charlet to the soldier, Jean Jean, when he heard the first gun fired. I tried to con- 
sole him as well as I could. " M. de Pradt," said I, " was never able to speak in 
the Chamber when on his legs ; all the arguments that he had so elaborately 
studied, abandoned him ; and he used despondingly to say, that he would willingly 
give ten years of his life for six months' practice at the rostrum. I have heard 
several of the most experienced public orators confess that they never ascended the 
rostrum without a painful feeling, and could not commence the exordium of their 
speech without a powerful effort." 

Delivered under the most unfavourable circumstances, Auguste's speech was one 
of those to which reporters invariably apply the following stock phrase : — " The 
Honourable Deputy spoke in a very low tone of voice, which failed to reach us in 
the gallery." But I, foreseeing this, had taken measures accordingly. Assisted by 
Auguste, I had prepared four copies of the extempore speech, and sent them to the 
leading newspapers ; and in the evening we went round to revise the proofs, and 



THE DEPUTY. 231 

insert at the conclusion of the most striking paragraphs the sympathetic words, 
"Hear! hear!" " Profound sensation," and " General applause." 

We ventured to alter a few words, escaped in the warmth of the discussion ; and 
a paragraph or two added after the debate, gave relief to the weak points of the 
speech. Such are the precautions constantly taken by every Deputy careful of his 
reputation as a speaker ; and ours secured for Auguste the well-earned congratu- 
lations of his constituents. 

Numerous and flattering were the felicitations he received. He was the true 
protector of his district, the saviour of his country, and the glory of France. Every 
letter teemed with praise, which was accompanied in every instance by a request, 
a commission, a petition, or the demand for some favour. Each constituent had a 
wish to express, certain hopes to reveal, some expectations to hint. The Deputy 
was become on a sudden the guardian angel of his district, but it was not intended 
to leave him in the quiet enjoyment of a sinecure. He had purchases to make for 
the ladies of his neighbourhood, — books, millinery, jewellery, china, and furniture ; 
he had to advocate every claim ; to support all rights, old and new, past, present, 
and future ; to foster all complaints ; to countenance all pretensions, and all petty, 
insatiable ambitions. Two or three schoolboys were entrusted to his care : he was 
to go and see them often at college, and to send for and amuse them on holi- 
days; and was actually to be responsible for the faults of four or five law and medical 
students, whose conduct he was commissioned to inspect. Nor was this all. His 
arrondissement had numerous claims on the budget, and instructed him to sue the 
Government for grants of money, books, pictures, and statues. They set forth 
their claims to new bridges and new roads ; they had valleys to fill up, mountains 
to level, and rivers to divert from their course ; they wanted a regiment to enliven 
their principal towns, &c, &c, &c. Auguste was unable to stand it. Heaps of 
letters were brought him by every post ; and incessant were the demands made 
upon his purse. 

The character of guardian angel of a country district is not maintained without a 
world of trouble. Auguste's door was besieged every morning by crowds of eager 
applicants. He had countless letters of introduction to write ; and all his time was 
taken up by innumerable visitors. He was the natural comforter of all the mis- 
fortunes of his department. An unceasing call was made upon his cash-box, for 
loans or for charity. In the Chamber, he was assailed by fresh importunities. 
Some came up from the country on purpose to see and hear him ; and for them he 
could do no less than procure tickets of admission to the Chambers, and to view 
the public monuments. He was, moreover, expected to devote a few hours a day to 
do the honours of Paris to his constituents, and to introduce at least the leading 
men amongst them to the Minister. 

Meanwhile, in the midst of these tribulations, honours came to console him : he 
was invited to Court. He now began to think much of himself, and to consider 
whether some high office of state would not suit him. After having so often ex- 
erted his influence in the service of others, he felt that he had some right not en- 
tirely to forget his own interest. Without any very strong political bias, and free 
from unjust prejudices, Auguste never displayed a stern hostility to power ; but 
when he entered public life, he wisely determined to avoid any engagement that 



232 



THE DEPUTY. 



would hazard his independence. I cannot affirm whether any change has since 
taken place in his convictions ; but he lately told me, that if those fierce opponents 
who are always combating men in power, had more opportunities to see them at less 
distance, they would undoubtedly be less severe. It is true that Auguste is now a 
member of the Legion of Honour, and he affirms that the red ribbon is the indis- 
pensable appendage to a Deputy. It is my opinion that, so far from conferring a 
distinction upon my friend, his ribbon throws him among the common herd. 

The Deputy obeys the law of the successive epochs of life defined by philosophers. 
Young, he is an ardent promoter of reforms, and easily led by external impressions. 
In maturer age, he grows ambitious ; and whatever path he may follow, be sure it 
is selected as a road to fame or power, — the two exclusive objects of his predi- 
lection. Old, the past is his all : he commends, praises, and venerates it. He would 
fain believe, as he tries to persuade others, that he regrets the time when his con- 
victions were more generally admitted ; but he mourns only for his departed phy- 
sical strength, and the sinking power of his intellect. 

To whichsoever party the Deputy may belong, you will recognize him readily by 
the solemn explanation of his political principles. There is something ludicrous in 
the assurance infused into his person by his still recent election, when blended with 
provincial manners. Accustomed to mix with the great on terms of equality, he 
seems to think he has a right to treat other people without much reverence. He is 
fond of talking of what he will do, of what he will prevent, and of what he will allow. 
There is something grotesque in his own opinion of his political power ; and the 
gravity of our national institutions is hardly sufficient to repress the laughter 
prompted by his extreme arrogance. The affected dignity of certain Deputies has 
created an entirely new feature in our social life, — political pedantry. 

This reminds me of an anecdote that I cannot forbear relating. A few months 
since, after a gay evening, a party of young gentlemen were riding on donkeys in 
the Bois de Boulogne, after the time fixed for closing the gates, which were accord- 
ingly shut against them ; and the keeper, following his instructions, declined to 
open them. Among the merry party was a Deputy, who, to each and every objec- 
tion of the gate-keeper, answered, with the utmost gravity, from his donkey, 
" Open, Sir, I am a Member of the Chamber of Deputies." 

Our National Council contains many modest and scrupulous men, who resist the 
pleasures of the world, and the allurements of Court. There are industrious De- 
puties who devote themselves, with patience and disinterestedness, to laborious and 
difficult, yet useful research. There are men of noble organization, of high prin- 
ciples, and of superior talent. In the Chamber may be seen truly honest politicians, 
sincere lovers of their country, men well acquainted with its real wants, and some 
among them are remarkable for their courageous perseverance ; but these sit with 
dandies, nonentities, and flies, who are incessantly buzzing about the wheels of the 
state coach. The Chamber contains twenty different types ; and it would be im- 
possible for the closest observer to compose from its elements a generic character. 

This indistinct feature may easily be accounted for. From our political organiza- 
tion aristocracy has disappeared, and democracy is not yet constituted. Everything 
moves and fluctuates between these two extremes. The Daguerreotype itself could 
not fix on paper these mutable images. 




THE PARISIAN LADY'S 



MAID. 



BY AUGUSTE DE LACROIX. 




EEKING love stories, from inclination or profession, 
you are perhaps fond of fireside tales and scenes of 
private life ; or, novelist and tale -writer, (pardon the 
supposition,) you are a collector of anecdotes and a 
chronicler of intrigues ; or, having a talent for story- 
telling, you perchance cultivate scandal merely for 
the pleasure of repeating it to your friends ; or, you 
are ambitious, and would fain owe success to your 
influence with the fair sex ; or, again, you are hand- 
some, clever, and desperately in love : — In either case, reader, take our advice, and 
before entering the drawing-room, bestow a glance on the antechamber ; the ante- 
chamber leads to the drawing-room, and the drawing-room to the boudoir : before 
paying your compliments to the lady of the house, smile on her maid. 

The Lacy's Maid ! The very name conveys a mysterious idea, yet strikes 
at once the dullest mind, and excites the most dormant curiosity. The name alone 
suggests a world of unpublished anecdotes ; of thoughts and sentiments buried in 
the depth of the heart ; of stories, affecting and ludicrous, breathing the very soul 
of love, and anon teeming with bloody horrors. Othello, Geronte, Scapin, Desde- 
mona, and Celimene, rise to the imagination. But of all these physiognomies, the 
most youthful, the most smiling, the most enchanting of all these types, the truest 
even at the present day, and the most graceful, "is Dorine, the charming soubrette, 

H H 



234 THE PARISIAN LADY^ MAID. 

whom every body knows ; Dorine of the sprightly form, the adventurous foot, the 
hand and eye so mischievous ; Dorine, who bears and receives all the emblematical 
nosegays and perfumed billets-doux ; who like a good girl protects the love affair of 
Marianne, holds out her hand to gallants, and her cheek to Frontin ! The pretty 
parrot ! She it is who trips so lightly from the servants' hall to the antechamber, 
from the antechamber to the staircase, perching and chattering, in turn, on the 
first, second, and third floors ; the morning in the porter's lodge, and at evening in 
the aerial cage to which she climbs to sleep, and to dream. She has changed her 
name, her language, and her dress ; but she is still the same person. 

Her name is no longer Dorine ; she answers to Angeline, Rose, Adele, or Celes- 
tine ; no longer does she say Frontin, Mascarille, or Crispin. Let us, however, call 
her awhile by her former and prettier name, her patronymic, that we may make the 
reader better acquainted with her. 

The Lady's Maid, like the cook, is, in consequence of her position, beyond the 
pale, if not above the station, of servitude. In fact, these are two powers, of which one 
reigns only two hours of the twelve, and the other all day. Everybody in the house 
is well persuaded of this truth, and admits it without dispute. And who would deny 
the superiority of the Lady's Maid ? Who would compete with her for authority 
and power ? Not her master's valet, certainly. Were he Scapin himself, Dorine 
would nonplus him, poor fellow, in less time than it takes him to nonplus his master. 
Has she not on her side, in addition to an equal position, the indisputable advantage 
of female wit and ingenuity ? The valet may be dismissed and replaced without 
the economy of the family being disturbed thereby. His intercourse with his master 
is neither so important nor so confidential, as that of the Lady's Maid with her 
mistress ; men are less confiding than their wives : the master generally has less 
occasion to impart secrets — the valet less interest to know them. His vocation is 
of a more general nature, and even in the best families, his duties are not always 
very strictly defined ; the circle enlarges or diminishes around him, according to 
circumstances and the wants of the moment ; overwhelmed at times with work, he 
not unfrequently encroaches on his fellow- servants' domain, without becoming, in 
consequence, richer or happier. Occasionally, he is impressed into his mistress's 
service ; and sometimes one sees a valet suddenly metamorphosed into a groom, a 
coachman, or a footman ; but who ever saw a Lady's Maid transformed into a nurse 
or nursery maid ? The incompatibility is evident : the Lady's Maid belongs exclu- 
sively to the mistress of the house ; she is her private property, and may not be 
touched without her permission ; on her depend her mistress's comfort, well-being, 
and happiness — nay, perhaps even more than that. In truth, all her mistress's 
secrets, as well of her heart as of her toilette, are known to the Lady's Maid ; the 
latter it is her business to manage, — the former cannot escape her. Her mistress 
belongs to her, body and soul. Was a letter received this morning ? Dorine knows 
from whom it came, and why her mistress shortly afterwards went out alone and on 
foot ; she could account for the severe head-ache which prevented her mistress from 
going to the ball the day before yesterday with her husband. The Lady's Maid 
knows the exact amount of the milliner's and dress-maker's bills. She knows the 
precise quantity of wadding required to line a pretty woman's stays ; the measure 
of tears that a tender-hearted mistress can shed on occasion. She knows (what 



THE PARISIAN LADY'S MAID. 235 

does she not know ?) that no woman is faultless in the eyes of her Lady's Maid, as 
no man is a hero in the eyes of his valet. 

See how everybody in the house bows before her, and Frontin first of all. He is 
almost afraid to put his arm round her waist, and hardly ventures to snatch a kiss, 
such is his dread of her little majesty ! And is not Dorine in reality a queen ? — 
queen of the boudoir, as of the servants' hall ; queen over her mistress, whose 
secrets she possesses ; and queen of her equals, whose fate is in her hands ? Dorine 
enjoys her lady's confidence, and her lady is all-powerful with her master. Let 
Dorine say only a word to her mistress, and her mistress to her husband, and it is 
all over with the imprudent fellow- servant who has offended her, or presumed to 
contest her influence ! Dorine is the beginning and the end, the arm that strikes in 
the dark, the planner and executor of all deeds. 

What matters it whether Dorine be fair or dark, tall or short, or even (if you will) 
plain ! She will be no less admired, courted, and beloved, like all pretty and witty 
women of five- and- twenty, with graceful figure and alluring looks. If not courted 
by some tall and handsome " Chasseur," or some crafty little valet who " mademoi- 
selles " her, she almost invariably condescends to notice favourably some dandified 
linendraper's assistant, or sixth clerk in an attorney's office, whom she met one 
holiday at the Chaumiere or at the Ermitage. M. Oscar, Alfred, or Ernest, is a 
very genteel young man, who wears an elegant moustache, and yellow gloves on 
Sunday, and frequents only respectable public gardens. His manners are very polite : 
he takes off his hat when he invites a lady to dance, and does not allow himself to 
be carried too far by the excitement of the waltz and gallopade. In the course of the 
quadrille, the gallant cavalier thrice restores the dropped pocket-handkerchief to his 
divinity ; thrice she smiles, ard thrice they exchange pressure of hands. Her fate is 
sealed ; Dorine is conquered, Oscar triumphs, and the happy couple repair to the 
shade of by no means mysterious groves, to exchange vows of eternal love, which 
generally lasts just as long as the bals champe'tres of the season. 

The Lady's Maid, in common with all persons endowed with keen perceptive 
powers, is a great observer : this is at once a mental enjoyment, and, in her posi- 
tion, a valuable qualification. It is well known that servants have a hundred eyes, 
as many ears, and often twice as many tongues. This treble power, increased ten- 
fold by constant practice, they never fail to use for their amusement and personal 
advantage, generally to the detriment of their masters, whom they observe and 
endeavour to copy, and whom they constantly watch and betray. See how the 
valet searches his master's heart as with a magnifying- glass ; he will discover the 
hidden sources of all his joys and sorrows ; turn to account his secret inclinations : 
and when he has traitorously possessed himself of all his peculiarities, he will 
unmercifully caricature his most innocent foibles and most harmless peccadillos. 
Frontins and Mascarilles were certainly the inventors of mimicry ; it was not till 
after their time that caricatures were cast in a mould, or traced upon paper ; and the 
best living mimics are still to be found in the servants' hall. But we must except 
the Lady's Maid. She is generally more indulgent; she imitates, but does not 
parody ; and she is quite in earnest when she copies her mistress. It is true that 
like her lady she lisps, assumes her gait, affects the same manner, the same expres- 
sions, the same gestures. There are days when, like her mistress, she is low-spirited, 



236 THE PARISIAN LADY'S MAID. 

and one may overhear her say, as she glances with a languishing smile on the 
mirror, " How frightful I am to-day !" When alone, she practises her mistress's 
manner and smile ; sometimes she turns over the leaves of books left out of the 
bookcase, and passes hours in the evening reading in her room books lent her by 
her lover. When she quotes, she confounds Lamartine with Paul de Kock, Balzac 
with Pigault Lebrun. She knows the names of all the greatest artists ; she some- 
times accompanies her mistress to Saint Roch, or the Exhibition, and at times will 
converse on music and painting, aping, with a pedantic air, before her gaping fellow- 
servants, fashionable phrases and technical expressions. She will carry her mania 
for imitation so far as to put on, " only to see how it would look," her lady's dresses 
and jewels. One day her mistress, on unexpectedly entering her bedroom, sur- 
prises Dorine giving herself airs before the glass, to the great satisfaction of the 
handsome footman, who in his turn is strutting about the room, and ogling his com- 
panion with an affected air of gallantry, in evident, imitation of his master. Terri- 
ble is the scene, and the counterfeit lady narrowly escapes dismissal, to flirt at ease 
out of place with the liveried Antinoiis. But Dorine begins to cry; Dorine is so 
attached, so discreet ! and the Antinoiis, who is no less than six feet high, is one of 
those men who are not easily replaced. 

The Lady's Maid is eminently sensitive and affectionate by nature, and her 
tender disposition is well fostered by the circumstances that surround her. Con- 
stantly placed between the license of her fellow- servants and the more refined lan- 
guage of her superiors, breathing by turns the intoxicating air of the boudoir and 
the tainted atmosphere of the servants' hall, her imagination becomes excited, and 
her bewildered judgment can hardly protect her against too many temptations. 
And how should it be otherwise in a young woman of twenty, with acute percep- 
tions, a quick ear, and large bright eyes ? The Lady's Maid has been vilely slan- 
dered ; many have calumniated her, and few, very few, have done her justice. 
Malice and ingratitude, say we, — yes, ingratitude. Remember, fastidious young 
man, the days of your happy childhood; try to recollect your most delightful 
dreams, and say, ingrate, whether among all the romance of the past, amidst all 
the fond tenderness lavished on your early years, all the kisses accumulated on your 
fair forehead and your rosy cheeks — whether you have forgotten the affectionate 
girl who loved you more fondly than your nurse, who could sooner lull you to sleep 
in her arms, and who so sweetly kissed your tiny white hands and your large blue 
eyes ? And, more recently, — yes, more recently, — why blush ? Love ennobles his 
votaries. Have you forgotten her true, delicate, disinterested passion ? Nay, have 
you ever since experienced such a love ? Who showed more devotion to your 
slightest whim ? Remember how eager she was to serve you ; how many times she 
took your part in your absence, and assumed the responsibility of the faults that 
you were unable to conceal. Did she not enter your room at all times on the 
slightest pretext, begging your pardon, when she came to serve or worship you ; 
smiling on all occasions ; bestowing on you many a happy look on the sly ; passing 
and repassing near you ; stroking unobserved your hand with her own, and sweeping 
your face with her long tresses ; displacing, in order to replace, everything about 
you ; fidgetty, anxious, and yet happy ; yes, too happy to be rewarded with a single 
look, or the least sign of gratitude, that she would have begged on her knees, and 



THE PARISIAN LADY'S MAID. 237 

of which you were so niggardly ? Confess that you learnt from Dorine these gentle 
artifices of woman's love. Ah ! is not this an unique passage in both your lives, im- 
bued for you with sweet revelations, and for poor Dorine with inexpressible anguish ? 
Thus was her solitary chamber transformed for you by love into a downy nest, poor 
little bird that you were, soothed and content , while Dorine was almost always 
absent, scarcely daring to trust her trembling feet within the precincts of your 
hiding-place. Be guided by us, and gratefully cherish such a remembrance. Many 
young men, (and those not the happiest,) brought up beneath the paternal roof, 
receive this gentle initiation elsewhere ; and with all due deference to ye, high and 
fashionable ladies, be it said, the first and most interesting chapter in the history of 
our loves, the most brilliantly coloured and the richest of our youthful emotions, 
are inseparably connected with the Lady's Maid. Dorine takes precedence of 
Cidalise. 

The Lady's Maid is all love ! Excellent nature, and touching destiny ! Her in- 
defatigable exertions are devoted to her mistress's comfort ; and, as long as she 
may suffice, her young master's happiness is entrusted to her exclusive care. She 
beholds the very love that her first blandishments awakened, insensibly transferred 
to a higher quarter. She sees it, and many a sigh it costs her ; but she does not 
weep, nor manifest any outward grief ; she is not allowed to complain. Such is 
her fate. Within, as well as without, all is mystery ; her heart is full of secrets, — 
her own, and those of others. Who dares to say that the Lady's Maid is indis- 
creet ? What rejected lover, or evil-intentioned author, ventured to give breath to 
this scandalous thought ? The Lady's Maid indiscreet ! Indiscretion implies curi- 
osity ; but the Lady's Maid knows everything. She is the bearer of that letter 
into which you suppose she is peeping, and she it is who will take back the answer. 
Then will not at least partial confidence be required, to secure her prudence and 
direct her skill ? 

Not satisfied with attacking her morality, and the qualities she employs in her 
mistress's service, her traducers have gone so far as to question her principles. 
Writers, who fancy themselves deep thinkers, dramatic authors and actors, and all 
persons inclined to scepticism, affect to doubt her disinterestedness ; and have 
thought it the height of wit to represent her delivering a letter with one hand, and 
receiving a bribe with the other. Fie ! This may be the case with Figaro and 
Scapin, scurvy valets, and impudent rogues ; but depend upon it, gentlemen, 
Dorine no more sells her precious talent than her pretty person : her mistress has a 
constant claim upon the one, and the other she perhaps gives to some handsome 
young man of her acquaintance. A grateful smile, a pat on the chin, a kiss — one 
single kiss — snatched from her lips, are the only reward she expects for the tender 
billet-doux delivered by her soft hand. In faith, her ambition does no farther go. 

After this, command her services, dispose of her as you will ; fear nothing, she 
is yours ; she will watch for you night and day, will walk before you, smooth 
all difficulties, avert all dangers, open all doors, — not excepting her own, if neces- 
sary. Amiable being ! — May all valets present and future, the handsomest foot- 
men, the most dandified shopmen, and the most fashionable young clerks, reward 
you with constant love and happiness, pic-nic dinners, boxes at the Funambules; 
with twelvepenny scarfs, hair rings, aprons, silver watches, pinchbeck chains ; with 



238 THE PARISIAN LADY J S MAID. 

cyder, stewed chestnuts, songs ; and return, besides, a hundred-fold, the good you 
do, and the services you render ! Go, fair messenger of love ; let the evil-minded 
defame you as you pass ; do you take no notice of those honest women who blame 
you aloud ; take our word for it, you have their secret approbation. Go, set out 
on your errand of love, messenger of hope and happiness ; hasten, glide, but take 
care of your delicate white stockings and well-polished shoes ; hold up, that you 
may not splash, the skirt of your muslin gown, and display your neat and slender 
ankle ; cast your eyes towards the ground, in order that you may see and be seen 
to more advantage ; young men stop or follow you, to examine you more at their 
ease ; and among the fine ladies whom you pass, more than one would willingly 
give her velvet dress for your slender and graceful form, and barter her costly laced 
mantilla for the fair skin of your shoulders, not entirely concealed by your plain 
blue scarf. Even your jaunty and coquettish apron, like every other article of your 
dress, becomes you with a grace peculiarly your own, charming Dorine ! 

Whence comes the Lady's Maid, and whither does she go ? What are her origin, 
her destiny, and to what end is she fated ? Is she a myth ? Is she the personifica- 
tion of that first and most Christian virtue which inspired the sublime words, 
" Much shall be forgiven;" and again, " If you give only a cup of water?" The 
Lady's Maid has given more than a thousand ; she gives at least one every evening 
of her life. What has she not given ? She has given, or nearly so, the best years 
of her life, her increasing cares, the work of her hands, her good taste, her best 
skill, and her zeal, to her mistress ; — her leisure, her thoughts, her dreams, her 
white shoulders, and her rosy lips, she has given to love, to pleasure, — to ingrates. 
Once more, whence does she come ? — From the east, or from the west ; from 
Lorraine, or Normandy ? Was she born beneath the humble thatch of a cottage, 
or in the obscure garret of a porter in the Rue Quincampoix, or in the Chaussee 
d'Antin ? This grave question we have long pondered and turned over in our mind, 
and all in vain. Perhaps it may indistinctly be resolved in favour of some one of 
the eighty- six departments, and the fourteen arrondissements of the Seine. What 
are her future hopes and wishes ? To what does she look forward after her present 
busy yet idle life, so actively spent in the service of others, and in forgetfulness of 
herself ? Alas ! she is going, — 

" Ou va toute chose, 

Ou va la feuille de rose, 
Et la feuille de laurier ;" 

where the two sweetest flowers of life are going, — love and youth ; where all her 
sex, Duchesses and Countesses, as well as Lady's Maids, are rapidly hastening. 

Twenty-five years mark the Lady's Maid's meridian. After five more years, she 
begins to decline ; hereafter, she is only the shadow of her former self, until the 
period of her final disappearance, her total eclipse, in her fortieth year. This last 
decade of her services is a long night, which must not be reckoned as part of the 
life of the true Lady's Maid. 

How wonderfully she is improved, when she reaches the brilliant period of her 
existence ! She is no longer the shy, timid young girl, put out of countenance by a 
look, frightened by a word, knowing neither when to speak, nor when to keep 



THE PARISIAN LADY'S MAID. 239 

silence, nor how to tell a story in her mistress's service ; who overwhelmed her 
mistress with her attentions, and was not even able to dress her. Dorine is no less 
kind than formerly ; habit has only developed and strengthened her attachment ; 
but her zeal, now more enlightened, is more serviceable. Observation and reflec- 
tion have sharpened her natural intelligence, as it happens sooner or later with all 
women. And only see how much she has gained, — how gallantly she now becomes 
her uniform ! Fine stockings and faultless shoes replace the clumsy boots that 
formerly disgraced her feet. How gracefully does she tread with her charming 
little duchess's foot terminating a dancer's leg! No longer does Dorine, as formerly, 
make the floor creak beneath her heavy footsteps, to the great derangement of her 
mistress's nerves. She no longer walks, — she glides ! — This is the crowning per- 
fection of the Lady's Maid. The very word is a poem : it is the omega of science ; 
it completes all her other qualifications. If you would judge of the merit of a 
Lady's Maid, make her walk in your presence : the trial is infallible; you will guess 
at once, from her demeanour, what she is, and whence she comes ; you will recog- 
nize the stamp of the true lady in her elegant and easy bearing ; a certain affectation 
in her carriage will betray the bourgeoise ; and be sure that the woman of indifferent 
character will not fail to fix her impress on the step, as well as on the manners and 
language of her Maid. A book might be written on this subject. To glide is not 
only graceful in the Maid : it is also a precions talent, inestimable for her mistress 
and for herself, — nay, it may be a virtue. 

Dorine now has the carriage of a little queen. To see her lightly trip across the 
drawing-room, or, judging from her dignified deportment and amiable looks, when 
seated at needle-work, you would take her for the mistress of the house, were it not 
for her indispensable apron and cap. The white apron is the Lady's Maid's especial 
abomination : it is her Nisus' gown ; she looks at it with anger, and touches it with 
horror ; it is the familiar and implacable enemy that accompanies her everywhere, 
which distinguishes, betrays, and dishonours her. But for it, alas ! how many 
charming young men, and rich old ones, would have fallen in love with her, courted, 
adored, and perhaps married her ! Who will deliver her from the thraldom of the 
fatal white linen ? Oscar, Alfred, ungrateful young men, you accept her heart and 
reject her hand ! Have a care ! sooner than remain all her life clothed in white, 
like virgins whose face she may have, without their insensibility, Dorine will make 
a tragical end ! She will marry Frontin, who promises to free her from the apron ; 
or little Figaro, who every morning hands her a love-letter wrapped up like a curl- 
paper ; she would, if the worst came to the worst, marry the most thick-headed of 
collectors, — yea, even some entirely junior clerk of her acquaintance. The apron is 
the line of demarcation, — the only barrier that separates the Lady's Maid from the 
free woman (we do not mean this for a quibble), — so slight, and yet so insurmount- 
able a barrier ! Compelled to exist with her apron, the Lady's Maid takes it off on 
the least occasion : it is the first thing she removes on entering her own room ; she 
never wears it at table, nor in the hall, nor in the kitchen, nor in the ante-chamber; 
she removes it before crossing the drawing-room, directly her mistress is absent, or 
when she is not looking at her. We have seen more female artifice displayed on 
this trifling subject than would be required to conduct the most intricate intrigue, 
and mislead the most jealous of husbands. Inflexible mistresses have taken for their 



240 THE PARISIAN LADY^ MAID. 

motto, " We will maintain the apron ;" and they have maintained it. We have 
witnessed obstinate resistance on the one hand, and noble sacrifices on the other. 
High-spirited Lady's Maids, after desperate efforts, resign their duties, and retire 
conquered — but not humbled. 

Who may appreciate all the Lady's Maid's worth, when arrived at the most com- 
plete stage of developement ? She has made herself acquainted with the extent of 
her duties, and now well understands all the difficulties of her position. She has 
called to her aid, and employed in her mistress's service, all the qualities bestowed on 
her by nature, — all that experience has taught her. Her mistress's most secret 
thoughts are known to Dorine ; Dorine has seen and observed her in all circum- 
stances ; Dorine knows what she likes, what is disagreeable, and what painful to 
her ; Dorine knows how to console her, and how to touch her heart ; Dorine knows 
her past, her present, and almost her future ; Dorine knows whom she loved, whom 
she loves, and perhaps even whom she will love ; Dorine has so studied her mistress 
that she knows her by heart. Never may Dorine be disappointed in the favours she 
asks of her mistress, in her projects, in her hopes, in her fears. Nothing is left to 
chance, — Dorine can foretell everything. But perhaps the reader will say, " The 
Lady's Maid you describe is a confidant, and I no longer recognize the identity. 
All ladies have a Lady's Maid, beyond doubt ; but, God be thanked ! all ladies do 
not need a confidant." Pardon us, reader, you have mistaken our meaning. We 
honour all ladies in general, and our fair readers in particular. We know, more- 
over, that the masterpiece of the creation is at least as weak a creature as ourselves, 
and certainly much more crafty and subtile ; cunning is her strength, — artifice her 
element. We admit degrees and shades in everything ; but you will not refuse to 
grant in return, that even the most irreproachable woman has her " little" secrets, 
and her " innocent" mysteries. Hence it is evident that we differ only in degree. 
Deepen or relieve the shades as you will, the same features still remain, and the 
portrait will be no less true. 

And now, Dorine, that you have accomplished your uniform and well- sustained 
career, furtively gleaning for yourself a few stray pleasures in the vast field on which 
you have sowed for others so many secret joys and billets-doux ; now that hand- 
some young men no longer stop to gaze after you in the street ; now that love has 
flown away, and time has subdued the lustre of your black eyes, and the rosy hue 
of your pouting lips ; now that you hide your hair, and no longer dare smile ; now 
that you have lost all, even your pretty name of Dorine ; — come hither, my good 
Marguerite. We have both grown older since those days. Time has, alas ! de- 
stroyed our nest, and we no longer have wings. Many of those whom you loved 
have forsaken you, many have forgotten you, — from my memory you have never 
been absent. Come, take care of the old man, as you took care of the child, my 
good Marguerite ; and devote to him your declining days, as formerly you lavished 
your youthful years upon his childhood. I do not forbid you to love me still, 
Marguerite ; but if you would have me love you, cure my rheumatism. Dear old 
nurse, bring me my slippers ; warm well my bed, and carefully shut my bedroom 
door behind you. Dorine, good-b'ye ; good night, Marguerite. 




THE SPECULATOR. 



BY VISCOUNT D'ARLIXCOURT. 



" La Gloire et la Vertu ne sont considerees aujourd'hui que comme 
des biens de theatre, qui ne subsistent qu'en apparence, ou comme 
des fantosmes de romans apres lesquels courent leurs heros, qui sont 
d'autres spectres et d'autres fantosmes.' - — Lb Sibub db Balzac. 
1658. 



[i HE Speculator is the real type of man at the present 
day — the prominent character of the times — the great 
physiognomy of this money-getting age. Nobody 
has more elaborately studied the past, the present, and 
the future, with a view to compose from their united 
elements the groundwork of some new speculation: no 
one has more deeply meditated on modern monarchies 
and decayed dynasties — upon probable revolutions and 
possible republics — in order to ascertain which social 
chaos is likely to produce most gold. Not unlike the 
Deluge, the Speculator levels mountains and fills up valleys — but it is to reach for- 
tune at the speed of the steam-engine. He tries to analyze science, — to decompose 
glory, convinced that every kind of smoke may create a mechanical power, and be 
turned to account. He amalgamates good and evil, truth and falsehood, the sacred 
and the profane, the just and the unjust, and applies to the compound many a 
chemical process to produce some new scheme, to be worked out by a share- com- 
pany. The condition of the country is no more to him than a means of increasing 

I I 




242 



THE SPECULATOR. 






his profits by a tax on popular credulity : he only regards a ministerial change in 
connexion with its influence on the money-market, and he can tell at once what 
difference every crisis will make in his yearly income. He it is who has reduced 
trade to a mere contest of tricks, — politics to a struggle for bank-notes, — public 
morals to a financial question, and society at the present day to a den of Robert 
Macaires. All hail ! thou man among men ! 

This great personage generally commences his financial operations without pro- 
perty and without money, but he is almost invariably involved in debt, which com- 
poses the only capital he invests in the trading companies formed under his direction. 
Thus, well may he boldly carry his undertaking to an immense extent with perfect 
composure and placid countenance, seeing that he risks nothing — but other people's 
money. True, his honour and conscience would, in many instances, be at stake ; 
but the Speculator takes higher ground, and scarcely condescends to notice such 
trifles. Morality and notions of duty are not to impede his progress. His only 
care is to keep out of the reach of the criminal law ; in this precaution rests all his 
respectability ; and so long as he does not dread being indicted before the Court 
of Assize, he continues to play with outward propriety the character of virtue 
aspiring to genius. Very slight, indeed, is the line of separation between the citizen 
qualified for the exercise of all political rights, and the man disgraced by a jury's 
verdict ; within the limits of this line, however near he verges towards it, the 
Speculator continues to walk, carrying his head very high. Behold him in the 
undisturbed enjoyment of his rights. There is no dignity above his reach. He 
may, according to his fancy, be juryman, informer, national guard, sheriff's officer, 
diplomatist, policeman, cabinet minister, rioter, or juggler, — and, summing up the 
multifarious attributes of these characters, he may stand equal to a king.* 

Such are the benefits of civilization ! In the pursuit of his prey, the Speculator 
will fearlessly cast himself into the labyrinths of the times and country ; thence to 
fight or find a way out, he requires neither Theseus' sword nor Ariadne's thread. 
But he never dreams of fighting Minotaurs; he merely proposes to sell them French 
or foreign stock for the next settling day, or fascinates them with the prism of his 
numerous discoveries, or perhaps, throws at them poisoned balls of scrips and shares. 
Thus one sees monsters subdued, charmed, enraptured, hasten in their amazement 
to affix their signatures to stamped documents, and cordially to shake hands with 
the Speculator, after the fashion of kings at the commencement of their reign. 

The tribe of Speculators may, to a certain extent, be divided into two classes — 
the rogue and the dupe. But the true Speculator, the real type of the species, 
assumes at once both characters. Cheater and cheated by turns, his fraud is occa- 
sionally met by still deeper fraud. He will be sold to-morrow by the brother 
Speculator whom he betrays to-day ; charlatanism and deceit are his only wares, 



The successful Speculator is always very well dressed. He will draw your at- 
tention to the admirable cloth of his coat, and to the elegant material of his waist- 



* It is hardly necessary to state that this paper is written by a strong political partisan, and 
a faithful adherent to the elder branch of the Bourbons. 



THE SPECULATOR. 243 

coat — both new inventions, for which he has taken out patents. — " The want of some 
improvement in the materials used for dress is so generally felt by the public," &c* — 
To work out these patents, he has in preparation an extensive establishment, formed 
on an entirely new principle, and he expects a large demand for shares, as the profits 
are immense, and the calls will be unusually low. Hereupon the Speculator leaves 
you, to take his seat in an unexceptionable cab, drawn by a thorough-bred horse, 
which he recently purchased by the most extraordinary chance in the world. He is 
on the point of selling the whole turn-out to a friend of his, who is quite enchanted 
with it, and is to have it a bargain. He sacrifices all thoughts of profit, and will 
only ask a cool hundred pounds. He has the greatest objection in the world to 
small profits ; they positively disgust him. 

Arrived at the Bois de Boulogne, the Speculator alights from the very high seat 
whence he has been looking down on his remarkably small groom and the pas- 
sengers, and hastens to join a set of rich dandies, members of the Jockey Club, to 
lay before them various splendid schemes, from which the shareholders are to reap 
heaps of gold. A few thousands only are required to set on foot each Company. 
One scheme is particularly attractive on account of its object, and the personal ad- 
vantages held out to the enjojmient of its promoters, independent of the profits, 
which are to be divided among the Company. A few words will suffice to explain 
this famous plan. An establishment is about to be formed, on a magnificent scale, 
to promote a closer alliance betwixt the lords of the creation and the fairer half of 
mankind. The most refined taste will preside at the entertainments of this marvel- 
lous club, where temporary visitors of both sexes can only be admitted under severe 
restrictions. Special tickets, not transferable, and conferring unlimited privileges, 
will be delivered to the Directors. A regular and minute account of every transac- 
tion of the Company is to be rendered to the shareholders. The Speculator will 
himself undertake all the trouble of the preliminary arrangements ; his friends will 
only be' called upon to share the profits. To protect public order and serve the in- 
terests of his country are his sole objects, and every body may see at a glance all 
the benefits which the intended establishment will confer on public morals, and the 
security it will afford to private families. He is therefore acting from the most dis- 
interested motives, and is quite satisfied to undertake, without remuneration, the 
management of the concern, and the duties of — accountant and cashier. 

If he occupy a high position, the Speculator has not to wait long for fortune. 
The telegraph is always ready to assist him ; riots and conspiracies may be turned 
to account, and are, in fact, the Speculator's philosopher's stone. He invariably 
knows, a few hours beforehand, what sort of product will be worked out by the 
various elements simmering in the parliamentary boiler. He is prepared for every 
solution. By the triumph of the Doctrinaires he secures one per cent, on the Stock 
Exchange ; the success of the Opposition would be still more profitable, and only if 
the Court party obtained a majority would his benefits be diminished; but he is 
sure to be a gainer, happen what may, and the only point with him is to be in- 

* A sentence similar to this is found at the commencement of all prospectuses for new Com- 
panies lately published in Paris. 



244 THE SPECULATOR. 

formed in time. He will have no chance against him; therefore twenty men, 
trained for the purpose, are stationed between the Chambers and the Ex- 
change, to act as living telegraphs, and supply him, from time to time, with 
a bulletin of the parliamentary fever, and the result of every division. He 
cares not how the crisis may end: he only wants to speculate upon it. He 
acquires, as if by magic, mansions, villas, and all the luxuries of life; crosses 
and ribbons of every order are within his reach. And will all this last ? More or 
less, it is a sort of fantastical retinue, not unlike the descriptions in the Arabian 
Nights. One sees it at first gradually displayed ; it shines in all its splendour, and 
then disappears, to pass into the possession of another. France, of course, pays 
for all. 

The Speculator of the middle class has comfortable apartments, takes his dinner 
at his club, and invariably has a free admission to the royal theatres. He has a 
standing-place that he may call his own at Tortoni's, as well as on the Stock 
Exchange. He has a family, but he hardly knows where it is to be found ; and no 
doubt he keeps a mistress somewhere. To be above the reach of political revolu- 
tions, he has a foot in the Carlist camp, his arm is enlisted in the service of Louis 
Philippe, and some other portion of himself is for the Republicans. He holds in 
equal contempt the Legion of Honour and economical soups. " There is no 
making anything," says he, " out of such trifles." The anniversary Fetes of July, 
Punch and Judy, and political programmes, are to him all alike — bad and unprofit- 
able jokes. 

When — as it sometimes happens — he is a literary character, the Speculator sells 
the same manuscript five or six times. First it is published in the feuilleton of a 
daily paper ; soon after, it appears in two volumes octavo ; and ere long it is again 
sold, in a dramatized form, to the manager of one of the theatres. His production 
is a kind of Trilogy with three forms, three dresses, and three titles, but likewise 
with treble publication and treble payment, — and three times are the public taken in. 
Notwithstanding all this, the same work will one day be put forth in the modest 
shape of a 1 2mo or 1 8mo volume ; and finally be included in the edition of the 
author's complete works. — Admirable progress of literature ! 

The Speculator has no taste for the country. Of what use can be fields and 
harvests ? — To feed the inhabitants of this world ? It may be there is nothing quite 
unreasonable about it, and perhaps the common herd may find it not undeserving 
of attention ; but to him, the question is to provide food, not for mankind, but for 
speculation. 

If you could only contemplate the Speculator when, comfortably reclining in his 
easy arm-chair, he is perusing with delight the prospectus of some wonderful 
Company to which he is to bring all his industry, — his friends all their money ! 
How triumphantly he calculates every chance of gain ! The more apparently im- 
practicable the undertaking, the more certain is he of success. Try to propose, in 
Paris, to the elite of the intelligent capitalists, some simple and feasible plan that 
holds out the expectation of only an honest profit, and everybody will laugh at you. 
An honest profit, indeed ! — One would quite as soon beg in the streets. Who would 
attach his name to such a silly affair ? An honest profit ! — No man of note would 



THE SPECULATOR. 245 

share the responsibility of your scheme. What we require is a fortune made in- 
stantly, or at latest in three months ; and if we must wait, then let us have some 
dividends in anticipation. Without such temptations, no plan is worth ten minutes' 
consideration. 

If you were to propose a Company for stage-coaches to run without horses or 
coal, or a new kind of cloth to be made of jasmine, roses, and honeysuckle, first con- 
verted into pulp, and afterwards drawn, by an incomprehensible process, iuto fine 
threads, everybody would listen to you. Such plans exercise imaginative powers, 
excite enthusiasm, and, properly managed, offer a fair scope for juggling. The 
absurdity of these wonders throws no obstacle in the Speculator's way; they will at 
once succeed, precisely because they are absurd. 

Sovereign prince of the country of chimeras, the Speculator spends a great part 
of his life softly soothed by his sanguine dreams. He, in imagination, sees the 
golden rain of Danae falling in rich showers on his mercantile conceptions. He is 
unceasingly planning the conquest of all the golden fleeces that his fancy brings 
around him. He always bears in mind the example of the Millionaire, who first 
dealt in cattle, and has since — not much out of his old line — bargained for 
whole nations. He could name many of his comrades who, when they began life, 
had no acquaintance save tavern-haunters, and who now boast their intimacy with 
princes. It is undeniable that there are incredulous persons who laugh at his golden 
dreams, and pretend to know that several of these apostles of riches, and their pro- 
selytes, have been seen sinking through all their indubitable success, and amazing 
profits, to a room in the debtors' prison, or a bed in an hospital, or a cell in a mad- 
house But these insidious hints are beneath the Speculator's notice ; or, 

admitting the possibility of their truth, he totally disregards them. On rushes the 
great Speculator of the times, heedless of all opposition ; and, be he encouraged by 
applauses, or hissed down, many are sure to follow in his track. 

Observe him in his studio, surrounded by heaps of papers, and files methodically 
arranged. How many fortunes lie there on his table ! Let us look at the files, and 
take some of them at random. No. 3. A new process for travelling in waggons 
suspended on invisible iron wires. No. 8. Coal-pits, copper, asphaltum, and quick- 
silver mines on the point of being discovered near one of the suburbs of Paris. 
No. 9. Assurance Company to provide portionless young girls with rich husbands. 
Nota bene : Serious explanations will be given on the subject. No. 17. Musical 
and Dancing Association, to supersede earthquakes, plagues, and fires. No. 18. 
New Company to protect subscribers against the imposition practised in Paris 
drawing-rooms, under the multifarious forms of artists' tickets, lotteries for the 
poor, and benevolent subscriptions. No. 33. Scientific Association for the applica- 
tion of the Lancasterian system to the education of silk- worms. 

What a collection of bright and promising schemes ! All of them will be tried 
by the Speculator, and will appear under the pompous title of national ; and every 
one, successful or not, will produce some profit. There is no chance of loss to their 
promoter. If the undertaking succeed, he of course speculates on its success ; if 
not, he will speculate on its ruin. The falling building is a matter of speculation 
quite as good as the edifice in course of erection; and the winding-up of a Company 



246 



THE SPECULATOR. 



may be just as profitable as its organization, — materials and rubbish may by some 
contrivance acquire a great value. 

Perhaps the Speculator has a family, — it is not absolutely necessaiy ; but if he 
have brothers, nephews, cousins, he must assist them. Some may die before him ; 
and as he is the chief member and the protector of all the family, he has a right to 
expect that the bulk of the property will be left to him. How heartily would he 
then shed tears at the grave of the dear departed relative who had bequeathed to 
him the example of his virtues, together with more tangible testimonials of regard. 
Yielding at once to the inspiration of Heaven, and not inattentive to his worldly 
concerns, the Speculator takes the most active interest in all his relatives. One he 
places in the army, with advice, above all things, not to permit an equivocal word 
or the slightest offensive allusion to pass unnoticed. Such susceptibility is becom- 
ing in a French officer, and must be maintained, even at the cost of a few duels. — 
Another he persuades to undertake an adventurous voyage to some far distant land, 
— " India, Brazil, Turkey, China, Persia, — it matters not which. On the Continent, 
there is no scope for genius ; Europe is crowded with eager aspirants after fortune : 
if you wish for more air, and a wider field to work out your conceptions, and to carve 
for yourself a distinguished career, go abroad." — The third has from his childhood 
a peculiar vocation that the Speculator discovered at once. Holy orders await 
him : his soul is prepared to taste the beatific joys of a religious life. The convent 
of La Trappe or the Chartreuse will afford him a foretaste of celestial happiness. — 
A different destiny is in store for the last : he is to enjoy all the pleasures of the 
world : he will sit down to splendid banquets, and taste the sweets of love : his 
kind protector has chaperoned him, and is proud of his success ; but, unfortunately, 
his constitution proves weak, and unequal to such a gay life. In a short time, every 
one of these relatives so carefully brought up and so well placed out in the world by 
the Speculator, successively drops off. And what thinks the good man ? " Look 
here," he will say, " I have supported all my family, and provided for all its mem- 
bers. God has seen fit to crown my efforts with success, and I have much to 
thank him for." 

Of course the Speculator may marry, the same as any other member of the com- 
munity, but love will not have the least interest in the matter. The marriage por- 
tion is the only point worthy of his consideration. Beauty has no attraction for him, 
except as a means of improving his fortune through the interest of some powerful 
patron, a great admirer of beauty. Should such a chance fall in his way, the Spe- 
culator will not shrink from it. He will not be particular about his bride's age — 
a rich wife is never too old ; nay, her merit is in proportion to her years. How 
precious in his eyes is a dying angel, whose heavy cash-box will soon be in his pos- 
session ! How dearly will he prize her memory when she has fulfilled her part of the 
contract, and left him her riches ! — However, our Speculator will have no objection 
to marry even a child. The innocence of a young girl is so fascinating ! It is 
understood that the young girl is a rich heiress ; and it is indispensable that 
the property of the bride be in common. The Speculator knows the Civil Code by 
heart, and consequently cannot be ignorant that in that case the husband has un- 
controlled right over the property. 



THE SPECULATOR. 247 

Once married, the Speculator insures his wife's life ; for should his better half, 
old or young, happen to die before him, the property left will be increased by the 
amount of the insurance ; and no chance of profit is to be neglected. He also 
insures the lives of all his children. Poor little things ! they have many enemies 
to contend with, — teething, small-pox, the measles, &c; and if he lose any of them, 
he will receive some compensation in hard cash. On this principle, he finds that it 
might be profitable to have a numerous family, and in this respect, at least, he 
obeys the law of God. As to his own life, he sees no necessity to effect an inr 
surance on that ; for, in case of death, the amount of insurance would only benefit 
his heirs. 

But the speculative mania is not only raging among the higher classes of society, 
among those accustomed to all the luxuries of life ; it pervades every rank and all 
orders. The Speculator of the lower classes has a style peculiar to himself. He is 
on the look-out for all attractive dramatic performances ; and when, after sufficient 
puffing, the day comes on, he buys beforehand as many tickets as he can, and dis- 
poses of them to those good folks who arrive at the theatre just at the regular hour 
for opening the doors, and find, to their great surprise, that all the tickets are gone. 
Lately, on the occasion of the public exhibition of manufactured goods and objects 
of art in Paris, a new contrivance was originated, and found to work admirably. 
A certain Speculator, knowing that several little pieces were in preparation at the 
minor theatres, in which the names of the successful contributors to the exhibition 
were to be mentioned, went round, authorized by the managers and authors, and 
canvassed the whole of the manufacturers — proposing to praise them and their goods 
at so much per line. The bait took, public praise being particularly acceptable to 
persons having goods to sell, and of course all parties benefited by the scheme. In 
the first- place, the authors and managers, who could not fail to attract large audi- 
ences of spectators delighted to hear laudatory mention of their names ; then came 
the manufacturers, for whom the thing served as a capital advertisement; and, 
lastly, the public, who, in addition to the gratification naturally afforded by the 
performance, were made acquainted with the wonders of modern industry that best 
deserved their preference. What a masterpiece of ingenuity ! 

Descending a little lower, we meet with the Speculators described by Vidocq* — 
light-fingered gentry, who haunt all crowds, and speculate boldly on the confusion that 
therein prevails. See yonder prince, attended by his retinue, repairing to some cere- 
mony, as so many princes have done before him, and will do after. A gentleman among 
the spectators cannot forbear showing his loyalty by tears of joy : and while he is 
thus giving way to his feelings, the Speculator artfully takes possession of his 
watch. Handkerchiefs, pocket-books, jewels, change hands through his exertions 
with surprising rapidity. This kind of trade is the most profitable, inasmuch as 
nothing is given in return for what is taken from unwilling customers. Such pro- 
ceedings, it is true, are not without danger, and Speculators in this line seldom 
fail to have their names entered in the list of convicts ; but, be it said for the vindi- 

* A celebrated convict, who, after his liberation, was employed in the Parisian Police, and has 
written a memoir of his life. 



248 THE SPECULATOR. 

cation of public morals, that Speculators of the first water, who play very nearly the 
same tricks on a larger scale, may be seen driving in splendid carriages; and 
perhaps the day may come when they will condescend to append to their names 
the title of Peer of France, or acquire the honour of a seat in the Chamber of 
Deputies. 

To sum up, the Speculator knows everything, sees everything, calculates every- 
thing, tries to profit by everything. He sees at a glance what advantages, with 
a little management, might accrue to him from a Republican association, a mixture 
of bitumens, the success of the little queens in both peninsulas, or a new process 
for destroying bugs. There is nothing that he cannot turn to some profitable end. 
He will pass with perfect composure over the ruin of twenty families, and enjoy the 
destruction of a whole set of buildings, provided he can devise some means of 
gratifying, by their restoration, his own rapacity. His neighbours' misfortunes 
make no impression on him, and he construes the tenth commandment as follows : 
Thou shalt covet and try by all means in thy power to obtain possession of thy 
neighbour's house, &c. If you express wonder at this strange perversion, he coolly 
whispers in your ear that his principles are supported by great authorities, and 
are recognized and practised in the very highest quarters. 

His notions of good and evil require no lengthened explanation. Good, ac- 
cording to his vocabulary, is to be a capitalist : evil, to be penniless. Vice, is the 
deficiency of those qualifications to which the Speculator owes his rapidly- acquired 
fortune : virtue, is the art of obtaining what you covet by a series of artful tricks. 
And trade and commerce ? These are simply an open struggle to seize one 
another's money — a war to the knife between parties possessed of property, and 
others coveting the same, which must be obtained at all hazards, but with the least 
possible scandal. 

Never ask the Speculator what he thinks of piety and religious worship. His 
piety consists in a sacred love of all the luxuries of life ; he worships nothing but the 
regulations of the Stock Exchange. Nothing is holy in his opinion but such ar- 
ticles of value as the Hebrews in the desert threw into the smelting-pot as materials 
for the Golden Calf. 

What of his conscience ? He has one, to be sure, but it is like a child's soap 
bubble. It might at first be taken for something ; but in a moment it bursts, and 
no one can tell whence it came, and whither it is gone. 

What shall we say of the Speculator's heart ? It beats wholly for speculation ; 
and feelings of love, sympathy, and honour are foreign to its nature. It was said of 
a great general, that he had a cannon-ball in the place of his heart : the vacuum in 
the Speculator's heart is filled with a roll of bank-notes. 



'Ssa il 



I 




THE UNAPPRECIATED LADY. 



BY FREDERIC SOULIE. 




N the Unappreciated Genius, we have to introduce 
to the reader a state of existence without precedent. 
The scholar of the Sorbonne, in the fifteenth cen- 
tury, is the picturesque ancestor of the Student ; 
the Attorney is the direct descendant of the pro- 
cureur, and has been most scrupulous in appropri- 
ating to the last farthing of the patrimony; the 
Dandy is only a transformation of the fop, the roue, 
the fashionable man, the marvellous, and the ex- 
quisite ; and in the Academician of the present day, 
you may, notwithstanding very great alterations, recognize some features of the 
great writer of the seventeenth century ; — but the Unappreciated Genius was un- 
known to our fathers, and is peculiar to the present age : it is, we might venture 
to say, the immediate produce of modern literary speculation. The Unappreciated 
Genius is not an exotic, like the Lion, the Tourist, or the Turfite ; it belongs ex- 
clusively to France ; it drags its languid existence among the people self-called 
the wittiest and gayest in the world. 

If our neighbours the English were less busy working out our inventions, and 
converting them into sources of wealth, — if they had not still to deprive us of 
our trade in linen, and our silk manufactures, — and if they were not in con- 
stant search of an enormous lens to magnify the humid rays of their dim and pur- 

K K 



250 THE UNAPPRECIATED LADY. 

blind sun, in order to ripen the grape, and transplant the vineyards of Bordeaux 
to the marshes of Scotland, — they might, perhaps, contend with us for the creation 
of Unappreciated Geniuses. In truth, the first germ of this at once real and fan- 
tastic being may be found in the poetry of Byron ; but it must be confessed that it 
is the seed of a poetical flower which the French alone have gathered ; and while 
the English, completely occupied by vulgar comforts and material interests, have been 
carrying out all sorts of inventions by M. Brunei, which we considered beneath 
our notice, we have most cleverly deprived them of this invaluable seed, to sow and 
cultivate on French soil. 

It must be confessed that the culture has not been thrown away ; the ground has 
been carefully furrowed by all romantic pens for the reception of the seed ; rich 
manure has been applied, in the shape of dreamy poetry and consumptive novels. 
And how wonderful has proved the produce ! — how widely has it been dissemi- 
nated, and how deeply has it taken root ! Thorns have, however, sprung up with 
the good seed, and will soon choke it. Let us endeavour to explain what an Un- 
appreciated Genius is. 

It is not at random that we compare the Unappreciated Genius to a flower, for 
all flowers are not beautiful and sweet- smelling. Like the flower, the Unappreciated 
Genius is of two sexes : there are male geniuses unappreciated, and female geniuses 
unappreciated. 

The Unappreciated Gentleman is an extremely uncommon character, and never 
flourishes out of a literary sphere of life. To him the term " Unappreciated Genius" 
is peculiarly applicable, inasmuch as individuals of this species fancy that all that 
they think, all that they feel, and whatever they say, bears the stamp of " genius ;" 
yet these gentlemen are not generally called by this their favourite name. Their 
fathers are wont to call them " lazy dogs," men of business say they are " fools," 
while pretty milliners occasionally confound them with " poets." In alluding to 
this rare plant, our only object has been to request our fellow- students in moral 
botany to bestow an attentive examination on any specimen of the kind that may 
chance to fall under their observation. 

The following paper we propose to devote to the exclusive consideration of the 
female Unappreciated Genius, whose increasing numbers call for the notice of the 
philosophical critic. 

The Unappreciated Lady is generally less attractive than singular in her out- 
ward appearance. She affects all obsolete and extraordinary forms and fashions. 
She may, however, be recognized by the following external signs : — Gown of pale 
sherry- coloured silk, of very old pattern, or of black and red mousseline-de-laine ; 
chip bonnet, trimmed with velvet of decided colour ; thread gloves ; little or no 
collar, or pelerine; (she has a strong aversion to all articles of dress of white linen) ; 
a tortoiseshell eye-glass, suspended round her neck by a small hair chain ; a crystal 
brooch, containing a lock of hair ; a ring, also containing hair ; hair bracelets, the 
clasps likewise inclosing hair. The Unappreciated Lady wears an abundance of hair 
everywhere but on her head : the little that her profound reveries have left her 
hangs in scanty ringlets down her hollow cheeks, and singularly long and scraggy 
neck. The skin about her eyes is of a sentimental and earthy yellow hue, not 
always completely washed by her tears ; her hands are white, invariably stained 



THE UNAPPRECIATED LADY. 251 

with ink ; and her nails are seldom without a black border. Do not expect to 
find, in the Unappreciated Lady, that woman's perfume so familiar to Don Juan : it 
seems to us sensibly diminished, if not entirely destroyed, by the absence of perfume 
of any kind. 

The Unappreciated Lady's genius, generally speaking, does not reach its full 
developement until late in life, — from thirty- six to forty. She is an autumnal 
flower, that not unfrequently survives the winter through, in spite of the bleak 
winds that whiten her corolla. Instances have, however, been known of Unappre- 
ciated Ladies flowering in the spring, at the age of eighteen or twenty ; but these 
species could only have been obtained with the aid of artificial heat, in hot-houses 
where steam is superseded by novels and romances. Besides, they are almost sure 
to wither at their first invitation to a ball • and sudden transplantation into the un- 
romantic garden of marriage completely changes their nature. Such is not the case 
with the Unappreciated Lady when she takes maturely her full developement : if, in- 
stead of being accidentally transported into the solid ground consecrated to the nuptial 
state, she goes there of her own accord, she is still more vivacious and devouring. 

Before we enter upon the philosophical part of the analysis, it will be proper 
to speak of the localities most congenial to the Unappreciated Lady. She loves 
quiet rooms, remote from the front of the house, wherein the noise of the street can 
with difficulty penetrate, and whence her sighs may not be overheard. Day's " garish 
eye" is as insupportable to her as to the snapdragon ; and, like that flower, the Un- 
appreciated Lady hides her charms under a green veil, whenever by chance she finds 
herself exposed to the light ; but she contrives to live constantly in- doors, in a kind 
of doubtful twilight, which she manages by means of Venetian blinds that are never 
drawn up, and of muslin curtains, which are the fitter for the purpose the more 
they are covered with dust. 

In these mysterious retreats, there is always a great number of useless yet precious 
little articles, of which the Unappreciated Lady is alone able to explain the value. 
Sometimes a crucifix, often a pipe, here and there a withered nosegay, broken 
fans, and a little dagger, used for a paper-knife, though she never reads new books, 
but thumbed and torn volumes, which she hires from the circulating library, thereby 
encroaching upon the privileges of porteresses and duchesses. 

Now that we have done our best to set before the reader some of the physical 
elements of the Unappreciated Lady's material existence, we may proceed to unfold 
the intimate secrets of her moral life. Here the field is immense in extent, and 
most various in its details. The Unappreciated Lady's thoughts soar from the 
lowest regions of unlawful love to the most ethereal elevations of Platonic affection ; 
and, in this flight out of sight, every movement is a mystery, every effort is a grief, 
every word is a problem, every aspiration a boundless wish, every sigh implies a 
secret feeling. 

The Unappreciated Lady's history, previous to her attaining maturity, is, like 
her language, surrounded by an unfathomable mystery. She, on all occasions, 
sums it up in these words : — " I have suffered much ! " As to the nature of her 
great sufferings, it is a secret that one never learns, except through the indiscretion 
of her medical attendant, or perchance from an old number of the Gazette des 
Tribunaux. The Unappreciated Lady may be either maid, wife, or widow ; but 



252 



THE UNAPPRECIATED LADY. 



whatever may be her condition, her past life has always been marked by one, often 
two, sometimes four or five, great misfortunes, which weigh heavily on her existence. 

Single, the Unappreciated Lady is the scourge of old bachelors, who, in their 
younger days, have led a gay life. When age has exhausted their strength, being 
too old to seek a safe refuge in marriage, they look at least for repose in an alliance 
where they will bring the comforts of fortune, and expect in return tender nursing. 
They are wont to believe that they have found a suitable companion in selecting a 
lady past the grand climacteric, but whose languishing modesty still has attractions. 
They know what construction to put on her bemoanings for her former sufferings ; 
and these old libertines, whose lives have been spent in leading youth and innocence 
astray, do not hesitate to make allowance for errors in which they themselves may 
have been accomplices. They imprudently imagine that the poor old maids only 
seek repose from their misfortunes, as they from their pleasures ; and, deceived by 
an admirable semblance of resignation, they open their doors to receive their wily 
partners. From this day commences, between the old invalid and his younger help- 
mate, a struggle in which the unhappy wretch will be made to undergo all sorts of 
tortures, until he sinks, and finally expires. 

The Unappreciated Lady will at first gradually insinuate, and maintain with the 
boldest perseverance, that her past life has been as pure as a vestal's, and that she 
has been the victim of calumny. The old gentleman, who has not even strength 
enough to argue with her, tacitly grants her this satisfaction ; for she is a thought- 
ful, kind, and attentive nurse. Little by little, the angelic virtue of the exemplary 
companion is acknowledged as an established and incontestible fact by everybody, 
even by a few friends who are unwilling to cross a poor old valetudinarian. With- 
out ceasing to be kind and attentive, she next becomes rather tyrannical, and wants 
to regulate the old libertine's life. How can he refuse this control to one who has 
so well regulated her own ? Her attentions still continue, but not unconditionally ; 
she begins to be rather exacting ; the old man yields once, and again ; at last he 
one day hazards an observation ; now the Unappreciated Lady flies into a passion, 
and her aroused indignation finds vent in no measured terms : — " To have devoted 
a noble heart to a pious duty, and to receive nothing in return but base ingratitude ! 
Alas ! misfortunes have been my lot hitherto, and will attend me to my grave." 
If the irascible old man's temper get the better of him, and if he venture to 
question his partner's pretended misfortunes, then the Unappreciated Lady's triumph 
is at hand. " Time has been, when he did not speak in this strain ; once, he was 
not unable to appreciate the proud and fervent heart that was surrendered to him. 
But no : he never appreciated the treasure of virtue that God has sent him. 
How, alas ! should it be otherwise with one whose life has been spent in the com- 
pany of women of bad character, — women whose name she should blush to pro- 
nounce ! " Should the old man's pride, wounded by such a tirade, induce him to 
defend his agreeable reminiscences, and hazard a reply, she at once holds her peace ; 
she assumes an affected resignation, and a cold, severe, and stern dignity. 

Hence, the old man gets an indifferent breakfast, and a bad dinner ; nothing is 
ready for him ; his mixture, his draught, his barley-water, his newspaper, his foot- 
stool (he has a gouty foot), and his accustomed auditor to hear him, — none are at 
hand. He struggles, summons his courage, and tries to be independent ; and he 






THE UNAPPRECIATED LADY. 253 

fails : he now resigns himself, calls his tormentor to his bedside, and begs her 
pardon ; he had not appreciated her. She is thus acknowledged to have been 
unappreciated. From this moment, the unhappy old man becomes his companion's 
prey, like a lamb in the talons of an eagle ; from this moment, she may have a lover, 
who will drink the old man's wine, dine at his table, take snuff with him, — if, in- 
deed, he does not take his snuff-box. He will be called a brother-in-law, a cousin, 
a nephew, or whatever you please ; but he will at any rate be a member of this 
virtuous family, of which the Unappreciated Lady is the fairest ornament. Her 
family are introduced, — a numerous family, too ; cousins succeed cousins, and 
sometimes they bring their wives ; the family of the daily declining old man 
are dislodged, to make room for the ignoble intruders. The sounds of feasting 
and merry-making reach the deserted master of the house on his sick-bed. He 
fumes, he rings ; his evil genius appears, in high dudgeon. "■ What is the matter 
now? What do you want ?" "I fancied, my dear, that I heard — it seemed," — 
"What?" He stammers out his complaint. If he has strength enough left to 
rise, and verify his doubts, she bursts into tears, and laments, and becomes indig- 
nant. Is he too ill to stir ? — then she threatens to leave him, and be no longer 
unappreciated. Unappreciated ! — the everlasting, all-powerful word ; and, be it 
uttered with threats or with tears, the unhappy victim invariably yields : the word 
is a talisman. This lasts till the old man dies, and the Unappreciated Lady inherits 
his property, when she either turns religious, and marries a churchwarden, or opens 
a boarding-house or a circulating library, — most commonly the latter. 

Let us turn to a more distinguished species. The Unappreciated Widow is the 
caterpillar of young men entering the world : the simplest, the handsomest, the 
most affectionate, are her common prey. She has generally a tolerable income, — 
a life annuity of a few thousand francs, she contrived to secure by her first mar- 
riage. To this variety especially belongs the romantic science of dim twilight apart- 
ments. We could name more than one who keep floating wicks burning in porcelain 
lamps all day. It was one of those Unappreciated Widows who replied to the 
inquiry of one of her friends, who found her at noon reclining on her sofa, by the 
dim light of a night-lamp, — " Are you ill, my dear ?" " No : I expect Mm." 

Who could be the unlucky victim ? Poor child I pray the gods that you may 
fall in love rather with an apple-woman than with an Unappreciated Lady ! The 
moment an unfortunate young man, about to enter life, is espied by one of these 
vampires, in a corner of the drawing-room in which he has incautiously been left 
alone, the reptile casts a spell upon him, gently approaches his seat, fascinates 
him with her looks, and already absorbs him in her imagination. She turns to 
account any trifling incident : she accidentally drops her pocket-handkerchief, 
which the ill-starred young man picks up, and politely restores. The lady enters 
into conversation with him, and speedily becomes acquainted with his habits, his 
tastes, and his avocations. The young man must have some favourite predilection. 
He has recently left college, where everything is taught ; he has no doubt learnt a 
thing or two ; he either thrums on the piano, or daubs a little in water-colours, or 
scribbles nonsense in halting verse. On whatever subject he may speak, she dreams 
of nothing else. She doats on music ; or has an album, for which she must have a 
drawing, or " stanzas." The young man cannot refuse such a trifle. He will 



254 THE UNAPPRECIATED LADY. 

be kind enough to visit the recluse in her humble hermitage, where she will 
show him all her treasures of poetry ; he will certainly be enchanted with them, for 
his noble sentiments and refined taste are legible in his features. Dear boy ! his 
vanity is flattered, and he fancies that he is formed to love now what at college he 
cordially detested. He accepts the lady's invitation, and actually goes to see her. 

The den opens to receive him, and is immediately closed. A dim religious light 
prevails in this sanctuary, and the air is redolent of the perfume of oriental pastiles. 
He finds the lady wrapped in a long white peignoir, with jet bracelets and necklace. 
She is unwell, and low-spirited ; and her inexperienced visitor condoles with and 
pities her. 

" How kind this is of you ! " ejaculates the Lady, accompanying her words with 
a gentle pressure of the hand. " Your goodness quite overpowers me." 

If the young man be quite a novice, he imagines he has made a conquest ; he 
becomes bold, and determines to turn his good fortune to account ; the Lady yields, 
and threatens never to survive. If (and there is only this alternative) he have a 
presentiment of his danger, and attempt to effect a timely retreat, the Unappreci- 
ated Lady takes care to render escape impossible. She suddenly goes into hysterics ; 
the young man is obliged to afford her some assistance. A lady, of course, cannot 
be held accountable for what she does in hysterics ; and is unconscious where she 
clings for support. Sometimes it is to her visitor's neck ; and as she is not down- 
right ugly, the young man's eighteen years of age assist her materially to carry 
out her plan. 

From that day, the unfortunate youth is ruined; he belongs to her, body and soul. 
A bright future at last opens to her, after so many years of grief and misery. From 
the sudden and irresistible transports that overwhelm her, she believes that she has 
at last found the being of whom she so long dreamed in her days of mental agony. 
The young man believes all this ; he feels that he is adored, and, for a week or two, 
he mistakes vanity for love. Presently the scene changes. It is not he who has 
been seduced ; he has treacherously betrayed a too-confiding woman ; and on this 
pretext she is jealous and exacting, — all his life must be entirely devoted to her. 
He tries to shake off the yoke, and asks for a little liberty ; and now the Unappre- 
ciated Lady stands confessed. It would be strange indeed, if, on the day of his 
first visit, the imprudent young man had not dropped a phrase or two that politeness 
rendered imperative to a lady in his arms, heaping reproaches on herself for her im- 
prudence. The young man, to comfort her, had vowed eternal affection. On this 
ground hinge all the Unappreciated Lady's complaints : she is a victim. 

The real victim, wanting yet the requisite courage to go the length of an open 
rupture, writes a letter, in which he flatters himself he has hit upon an unanswer- 
able pretext. He sends it one evening by his porter, goes to bed, and sleeps. On 
awakening the next morning, with a vague sentiment of recovered liberty, he 
beholds, at the foot of his bed, a female face bathed in tears. The young man's 
porter had given the key of his little apartment to the Lady, who had applied for 
it, — not that the porter is not a man of the strictest morality, but the Unappreciated 
Lady looked so much like an aunt, that he thought it his duty to give admittance 
to a discreet matron, who doubtless came to read a lecture to his young lodger, 
who was beginning to run a little wild. 



THE UNAPPRECIATED LADY. 255 

Surprised in bed, the confused young man stammers out a clumsy explanation. 
He confesses to having been led astray by false friends, and again falls into the 
abyss from which he vainly tried to extricate himself. Henceforth his life becomes 
a horrible punishment. Every morning brings him letters, every evening has its 
rendezvous. He answers not the letters, and fails to keep the appointments. In 
happy mood, he goes to dine at the Cafe Douix; he takes a seat near a window; he 
converses and laughs, and drinks freely. Suddenly his hilarity disappears, and a 
cloud settles on his features; he beholds the Unappreciated Lady through the 
window, in a hackney-coach, stopped opposite the cafe ; she looks angry and ex- 
asperated ; methinks he sees her rush up stairs, make a scene, and ruin him by 
making him look ridiculous in the eyes of his friends. He makes an excuse to leave 
the table, descends into the street, and, to get rid of the Lady, promises all that she 
requires. He returns to his companions, but his appetite has fled ; his dinner dis- 
agrees with him, and he has an attack of indigestion. When he reaches his 
lodgings, there she is, awaiting his return ; and he is obliged to thank her for her 
kind attention. 

But ten volumes would be hardly sufficient to describe all the miseries, all the 
accidents, of such a story ; the threats of suicide proffered by the Unappreciated 
Lady ; her eternal complaints for all the sacrifices she has made at the shrine of 
love ; all the phantasma of false and exaggerated sentiments. This may perhaps 
last six months, at the expiration of which the desperate young man flies from Paris, 
or perhaps emigrates. To Unappreciated Ladies, other women are indebted for 
seared hearts of sceptics incapable of affection, — men who brutalize the most deli- 
cate sentiments, — who sneer at the tenderest affections, and who have originated 
the phrase, " She died of love and of consumption." 

However despicable may be the Unappreciated Lady as a spinster, however dan- 
gerous as a widow, these are nothing in comparison with the Unappreciated Married 
Lady. Various are the ways by which she enters the honourable state of matri- 
mony. Sometimes she is under the influence of that kind of mental disease that 
constitutes the Unappreciated Genius. In such a case, it is generally a country 
school teacher, who marries a widowed wine-merchant desirous of bestowing a 
second mother on his daughters. The good-tempered old gentleman continues to 
enjoy his dinner and his wine, and to indulge in his accustomed hearty laugh, while 
his lady preserves the contemptuous silence of conscious superiority, scarcely 
touching food, replying to her husband in monosyllables, and returning, with 
frigid dignity, the worthy man's affectionate caresses. He plays at piquet, while 
she reads Lamartine ; and he soundly sleeps, while she lies awake by his side. It is 
needless to say to what such an union leads. 

Perhaps the Unappreciated Lady marries with the sincere wish of becoming a 
good wife ; and it may happen that her mind becomes tainted by the contagious 
example of some acquaintance, or the perusal of romantic books. In such a case her 
morbid disposition is of the most dangerous nature. She has to avenge herself for her 
past life, thrown away; her husband is accountable to her for all the ineffable joys of 
a heavenly love, which she has vainly expected from him ; and she inflicts upon him 
a life of unmitigated misery. A clerk in a government office, for instance, who is 
obliged to leave his wife to herself all day, is particularly liable to the curse of an 



256 THE UNAPPRECIATED LADY. 

Unappreciated Lady. In his absence, everything finds entrance into his house, — 
female friends, bad books, pernicious consolations, and all. The evil grows un- 
checked, until it reaches such an height that it causes violent quarrels, which are 
followed by open and scandalous ruptures. 

Again, the husband may knowingly accept the Unappreciated Lady for what she 
is, for the sake of her money. Then he, of all the slaves in the world, is the most 
insulted, despised, abused, and vilified. He is allowed neither to have an opinion 
of his own, nor to go out and return home when he pleases, nor to be indifferent 
or attentive ; and, notwithstanding all this, he is accused of being the most bar- 
barous and tyrannical of husbands. He is, alas ! unable to understand a delicate 
female mind ; he does not comprehend those secret feelings upon which he tramples 
every instant; he has destroyed the illusions of a too-confident heart; and his vulgar 
life weighs heavily on the ethereal existence of his unappreciated wife. For the 
unfortunate husband of such a wife, the torture is renewed every day, every hour, 
every instant. When alone with her, she falls into a reverie ; at his first question, 
she contemptuously turns away her head ; why does he disturb her meditations, — 
he who is unable to appreciate them ? If he insist, the Lady flies into a passion. 
The Visigoth makes a point of brutally wounding her feelings; and he will not even 
allow her to take refuge in silence. Does he invite a few friends to dinner ? — She 
wraps herself up in the most chilling reserve ; and when he asks her to serve the 
custards, she wipes away a tear, affects a forced and gloomy smile, and stains the 
table-cloth. The dinner passes off in constraint, and every one present is uncom- 
fortable. When the guests are departed, the husband asks for an explanation, 
which invariably ends by hysterics, with the most elegant variety of the genus 
Unappreciated Lady. This lasts till the miserable husband obtains a divorce, de- 
manded by the wife for grievous bodily harm received at the hands of her husband, 
but granted to the latter on the ground of criminal conversation between his Lady 
and her cousin. 

At last, having buried her old bachelor, or ruined her last young man, or aban- 
doned her husband, the Unappreciated Lady one day writes a letter in the following 
fashion, to any author whose address she happens to know : — 

" Sir, — You who know so well how to describe the griefs of the female mind 
will understand me. I have suffered much ; and perhaps the details of my 
sorrows, traced by your brilliant pen, might interest your readers. If you should 
feel disposed to receive the melancholy outpourings of a heart bereft of all hope in 
this world, pray drop a line to A. L., Post-office, Rue ." 

The author, a merry dog, who loves a joke, and whistles the Cachuca as he 
corrects his proofs, reads the letter, twists it up, and makes use of it to light his 
cigar ; and, taking a walk in his little garden, invents the plot of a very pathetic 
feuilleton . 

The (still Unappreciated) Lady repairs to the Post-office eight days running. 
On the eighth, her letter remaining unanswered, she cries, as she kindles her fire, 
" Unappreciated I have lived, and Unappreciated I will die!" And, having taken 
her breakfast, she prepares to roast a leg of mutton for dinner. Alas ! poor 
Unappreciated Lady ! 




THE USHER. 



BY EUGENE NYON. 




iS S there a man in France, however hygone may be his 
schoolboy days, who does not look back with plea- 
sure upon that age when a holy day formed all his joy 
— when an " imposition," or an order to be " kept 
in," were sources of bitter grief and abundant tears ? 
Is there a man who would not smile to think of the 
dread inspired in his mind by that " merciless tyrant," 
that " unjust despot," that " tiger, thirsting for 
school-boy punishments," called " an Usher." 
The Usher ! Unhappy man ! Who is there, when he has once left school, who 
does not feel a sentiment of commiseration arise within him in favour of this un- 
fortunate pedagogue ? Who is there who does not accuse himself of injustice, 
when he calls to mind the injurious epithets of various kinds which he has be- 
stowed upon this inflexible Argus, from the ancient denomination of " Chien de 
cour" to the more modern contemptuous expression of "Pion?"f For my own 
part, I feel the liveliest compassion for him, and I pity his lot, even more than 
that of a corporal of the National Guard in the full enjoyment of his rank. 

Should the reasons of my intense pity for " the Usher" not be understood, it is 
only necessary to cast a glance over his daily life. After going to bed every evening, 

* The Usher in French schools (Maitre d'EtudesJ is not employed to teach, but solely to super- 
intend the conduct of the boys. 

f Literally, a pawn at chess ; anything mean, to be pushed about at will ; " a sneak." 

L L 



258 



THE USHER. 



" with the cocks and hens," — a common expression, but a perfectly correct one — 
like " shrill chanticleer," he is the first in the house the following morning, with 
his early crow of " Come ! get up ! the bell has rung." With that he enters upon 
his functions, and his daily work begins. The boys get up, and so does he : the 
boys go down, and so does he : the boys wash and brush themselves, and the 
Usher superintends the operation — for the Usher is supposed to have done " all that 
sort of thing" before his eleves : the boys enter the school-room : and there his shrill 
voice screams the first " Silence !" of the day. Woe to him who hears not the 
warning ! Woe to him who says a " good morning" to his neighbour, or murmurs 
a regret for the bed he has left. Let the ill-advised urchin only whisper — only 
move his lips even, the Usher is sure to hear him, for his well-practised ear is sharp ; 
and he proportions his vengeance to all the ennui which he is about to undergo 
throughout the livelong day. Once perched upon his stool, he is no longer a man — 
he is no longer a simple mortal — he is " an Usher." His babbling crew of young 
scapegraces must then mind what they are about. During the two long hours 
which ensue, he has nothing else to do but to watch and spy, to repeat the eternal 
" silence," or threaten the " imposition," of classic notoriety. Two long hours of 
such employment, and you suppose he is not to be pitied ; — two long hours like a 
poacher on the look-out to bring down a word on the wing, or snare a furtive wink ! 
At last the school-bell rings. Great is the influence of that bell upon the Usher's 
existence. It governs every action of his daily life. When it rings for meals, he 
must be hungry, whether he will or no — for going out, he must necessarily take an 
airing — for school-hours, he must as necessarily come in again — for getting up in 
the morning, he must have no inclination to sleep on — for going to bed at night, he 
must prepare to close his eyes. Were he in the liveliest possible humour, with a 
head full of bright ideas — a most rare occurrence, — he has the only alternative left 
him of sleep or reflection, for, the last tingle of the bell once heard, every candle 
must be extinguished. Slave of a bell ! Such is his destiny. 

This time, however, it sounds his hour of liberty. He is free — free for an hour 
and a half. Oh ! during all that lapse of time he is his own master ; no restraint ; 
no superior power weighs upon him. He shakes his wings and takes his flight. 
No one can hinder his going where he will. Paris, or the suburbs, — Versailles, or 
Saint Germain, — Corbeil, or Melun : he has a right to visit any place he likes : no 
one can oppose him, provided that he does not go beyond the stipulated time ; pro- 
vided only, that at the expiration of the hour and a half allotted him for becoming 
once more " a man," neither sooner or later, but at the very hour fixed, he is 
again to be found at his post. What an admirable privilege ! what independence ! 
As common sense, however, is sufficient to make him comprehend that any extensive 
excursion would seduce him into a want of punctuality, he does not leave the 
capital. As a general resource, the cafe opens its doors, and the newspaper its 
columns, before him : he reads the politics of the day, and learns by heart some of 
the reflections of " the leader," in order to make use of them at need. Should he, 
however, be one of the rare instances of an Usher inclined to corpulency, whose 
doctor has ordered him to take exercise, he then employs his poor legs, during his 
hour and a half, in trotting up and down all the streets of Paris, at such a pace, that 
he returns to the school in a most salutary state of perspiration. Or should it 



THE USHER. 259 

happen, that any requited or unrequited passion has gained possession of his heart 
— and the fact may be easily perceived by the impatience with which he awaits the 
signal of his independence, and the inconceivable rapidity with which he disappears 
the moment he becomes his own master, he then flies to the feet of his cruel beauty, 
whose heart is more or less subdued ; but time, more cruel still than she, runs on 
without pity for his sufferings ; and the hour startles him in the midst of a tender 
protestation, or an animated dispute, according to the nature of his feelings. The 
unhappy lover is confused, stops short, stammers, and puts off to the morrow the 
conclusion of his sonnet or his philippic, for from that moment he is no longer a 
man — he returns to his state of " Usher." He once more assumes his throne in 
his scholastic prison, awaiting the appointed times when he has to quit the school- 
room for the dining-hall, the dining-hall for the play-ground, and the play-ground 
for the school-room again, until the general dormitory arrives at last to offer him a 
chance of repose, and oblivion of the regular and monotonous life which is to re- 
commence on the morrow. 

False, indeed, in the Usher's case, is the saying, " Les jours se suivent et ne se 
ressemblent pas." His days follow one upon another, and never change. What he 
did yesterday he does again to-day : what he did to-day he will do again to-morrow, 
unless that morrow be a Thursday. The Thursday is a holyday ; but never once 
suppose that it is a happy day to him. He curses the Thursday no less than the 
other days of the week, including the Sundays, when he is " on guard." He has 
the permission, it is true, to walk out for three whole hours ; but he is fettered in by 
a long chain of boys — a weary, heavy chain, from which there is no release, and 
which he has to drag about with him during the whole walk, and bring home again 
u in all its native purity." Every fortnight, however, recurs a bright day in his 
existence — a Sunday. Ever since the preceding Thursday, he never ceases to talk 
of the Sunday when " he has leave out." Heaven only knows the innumerable 
projects that he forms for that thrice-happy day. During the summer, he dreams 
of country excursions, water parties, and ices at Tortoni's ; during the winter, of 
copious and nutritious dinners, conquests of sundry hearts, and the play. At length 
the long-desired Sunday arrives. He is up and dressed at early dawn, for he is not 
willing to lose a single hour of his day. While at church with the boys, the mass 
appears to him interminable ; and he is guilty of a thousand proofs of wandering 
attention during the service, at the risk of scandalising his hopeful pupils. His ex- 
clusive occupation is the consideration whether it will be fine, or whether it will 
rain. At last he quits the house, and by eight o'clock in the morning is wandering 
about " upon town." Breakfast — dinner — a lounge at his ease — all his dreams are 
realized, even to the play. But, alas ! in the midst of one of Achard's gayest 
songs, at the Theatre du Palais Royal, or one of Saint Ernest's most melodramatic 
declamations, at the " Ambigu ;" at the very moment when the poor Usher's lungs 
are merrily dilated by the broad jokes of the vaudeville, or his eyes streaming with 
tears at some admirable situation of the " effective drama" he is witnessing, he 
pulls out his watch — it is half- after nine ! He has to bid adieu to vaudeville and 
melodrama, to Achard and Saint Ernest, and quit all, under the penalty of being 
obliged to sleep in the street, and losing his place. The rules of the school are 
strict. At ten o'clock the doors are locked, bolted, and barred. He is forced to 



260 



THE USHER. 



abandon his pleasure, contrive to dispose of his check advantageously, and run home 
to present his neck to the collar which is again to tighten round him, until another 
fortnight has expired. 

As a recompence for the exactitude with which he performs all his agreeable 
functions, the Usher is gratified with " food of the most abundant and salutary 
description," (according to the style of the school circulars) ; sleeps upon an 
elevated bed ; and has the advantage of a coal fire and the school-room lamps. He 
is paid the monthly sum of forty or fifty francs, which, without pity for his cre- 
ditors, he spends upon his pleasure of every kind, and consecrates to the embellish- 
ment of his existence during the two days per month which are his own. 

To pass one's days among a tribe of troublesome boys, stuck up, as it were, as 
a scarecrow, to be a mere instrument for imposing silence, — can that be called life ? 
The master complains ; but he communicates his knowledge, and labours towards 
the improvement of his pupils ; the under-master finds a pleasure in the advance- 
ment of those under his immediate care. They have a principle of action — an end 
and aim — a motive ; the poor Usher has none ; his condition is of an entirely pas- 
sive nature, so passive, indeed, that I wonder legislators, in making additions to the 
punishments in our penal codes, in inflicting imprisonment, solitary confinement, 
and the galleys, have never admitted among the number the functions of an 
Usher " for life." Few, I opine, would ever be found guilty of a crime which 
would lead to so cruel a condemnation. 

And yet there are not wanting those who are desirous of the situation. There 
are many causes, however, which may drive a man to this desperate resolution — 
this sort of moral suicide. 

When, after having vainly attempted to find a landing-place in every haven ; 
vainly knocked at every door ; vainly tried to follow every path ; after having been 
by turns merchant, clerk, soldier, surgeon-dentist, Jack- of- all- trades, and Heaven 
knows what besides, a man finds that he succeeds in nothing ; that every thing he 
undertakes fails ; that his own incapacity, in fact, has rendered every haven in- 
accessible, closed every door, and stopped up every path ; in a word, when not a 
single chance of success in anything whatever remains, he then turns " Usher." 
When a man, whose younger days were all at once enriched by a paternal heritage, 
and who, careless of the future, and blinded by the enjoyment of the present, has 
squandered everything — fortune, health, youth, and happiness — is at last over- 
whelmed by despair, and contemplates putting an end to his existence — at the mo- 
ment of accomplishing the fatal act, may-be he hesitates : an idea crosses his mind, 
and he reflects that, short of suicide, another last chance remains ; he catches at 
the saving clause with eagerness ; he follows this instinct of self-preservation ; and 
he turns " Usher." 

There are others, it is true, whom neither incapacity nor distress has driven to 
this last extremity — who have been simply induced by motives of reason. Some 
have quitted their distant province to seek in Paris an honourable position in the 
world, ambitious of a lawyer's eloquence, or a doctor's science ; and, poor as they 
are studious, stand in need of a situation, which enables them to live for a time, 
and yet permits them to give themselves up to their studies. Others there are who 
aim direct at the professor's toga, or dream of nothing but the doctor's ermined 



THE USHER. 261 

gown, and who make use of this lowest of all positions as a stepping-stone, from 
which to climb upwards in university distinctions. But such as these form a class 
apart : to them " the profession" is not a track without an issue — a blind alley, as 
it were — where they are shut in for life. They have an idea to follow up — an end 
in view, towards which they march on incessantly — a career and destiny. 

Each different Usher, generally speaking, displays in the midst of the boys whose 
surveillance he undertakes, a different temper. All alike strive to appear of con- 
sequence in the eyes of the young crew ; but they take their measures very differ- 
ently. He of acknowledged incapacity never ceases to extol his own important 
qualities. According to his own account, he was destined for great things, and his 
misfortunes were the result of a concourse of the most extraordinary circumstances. 
Man's injustice, the caprice of fortune, fatality, are all accused in turn of being 
causes of his ruined prospects ; for he takes pretty good care not to take into ac- 
count his own want of merit, which alone reduced him to his present extremity. 
He is generally dull, heavy, and apathetic, and would, if he dare, take a daily nap in 
his chair : he has no force to control the unruly, no angry energy to rouse the 
lazy ; and ends by avowing himself vanquished in the struggle, which invariably 
takes place between master and pupil, to know which of the two shall domineer over 
the other. The unhappy wight is incessantly " quizzed" by the boys, and " snubbed" 
by the masters. He is the butt of all the school-boy tricks of a pack of merciless 
young tyrants. " I bet you," cries one, " that I hit him with my ball right in the 
middle of his back." " That you can't," replies another, " and I bet you three 
sheets of foolscap that you don't." The ball is thrown with all possible force, 
and hits .the mark exactly. " Oh ! it wasn't done o' purpose," cries the young 
urchin, " it was that other chap that I wanted to hit, and he ducked." He then 
turns his back to laugh in his sleeve, and the poor man puts up with the excuse. 

Let him once be the victim of one of these lively little jests without punishing 
the insult, and never a day passes without a whole torrent of practical jokes being 
showered down upon him. The chopped horsehair in his bed, the glass of water 
emptied into his coat-pocket, and the bread-bullets flung at his spectacles, are all 
borne without a murmur. It must not be supposed either that the boys owe him 
the least thanks for his forbearance : if ever it comes to a rebellion, the biggest 
dictionaries and the heaviest inkstands are sure to fly at his head. I say nothing 
either of the infinite quantity of caricatures chalked by these unfledged Daumiers* 
on the walls, which all bear an acknowledged resemblance to the original, although 
sometimes embellished by a fine, pimpled nose, and sometimes by an addition to the 
charms of the physiognomy in the shape of a pipe — the whole illustrated by the 
characteristic inscription of " Oh! ce cadet-lcL, quel pif quil af"f And thus, a 
constant butt to raillery or reproach, he passes through five or six different schools 
in the course of the year, and drags on his miserable existence, until he arrives at 
the poor shed of the street- scrivener, which he only leaves to die at some old man's 
hospital, if he has patronage enough to gain admittance. 

This species of the Usher may be easily recognized by his dress. He almost 
invariably wears a coat which once was black, but whose collar and sleeves are now 

* A well-known French caricaturist of the day. 
t Anglice : " There's a queer phiz ! — What a rum snout that chap has got !" 



262 THE USHER. 

of a nature to put a bears' -grease vendor to the blush : aud it is rare indeed that 
the acquired shape of his bangled hat does not form a perfect union with his coat. 
He adorns himself with his outer coating of dirt upon the principle of the Grecian 
Sage with his ragged mantle, and assumes all the airs of a philosopher. Once 
a year, it may be, he complains of the ancientness of his attire — on the day of the 
Head Master's fdte. A ball is given, and he is invited : but after having in vain 
trimmed his coat in every possible way, he finds himself compelled to refuse the 
invitation, and retire to the dormitory, where the noise of the ball still pursues him, 
and he takes his part in the festivities by passing a sleepless night. 

Very different from his brother usher is our ruined gentleman. He still follows 
the fashions, at his tailor's expense, and runs into debt in order not to lose the 
habit of it. His past fortunes serve to give him a certain position in the eyes of 
his Aleves. His temper is variable : he is either too easy or too severe ; he either 
never punishes at all, or strikes hard enough to cripple his victim ; and the cause 
of his capricious rage might very generally be found in the comparisons daily forced 
upon the unhappy wretch between his brilliant days gone by and his present situa- 
tion. He is a dangerous person, and ought to be carefully avoided. 

But, after all, such ushers as these are mere vulgar beings, the veriest plebeians 
of the trade : — a fig for them all ! we have had enough of them. There is one 
alone who deserves all our admiration — our utmost homage — all that respectful 
attention which is due to things rare and precious. He is grand — he is noble — 
he is sacred among ushers ! This Usher of ushers is the usher "by vocation." All 
honour be paid to him ! The species is rare, but it does exist. 

Examine, above all, that serious and imperturbable expression of face — that eagle- 
eye — that sedate carriage : then listen to that formal, monstrous, cavernous voice. 
What pains that voice has cost him ! In how many a rude trial has his throat been 
exercised in order to acquire that imposing tone ! Long has been the course of 
deep study which has enabled him to arrive at so marvellous a pitch of perfection. 
And that deportment ! To suppose that it belongs to him naturally, would be to 
fall into a grievous error. Like his voice, his carriage is the result of long and 
painful study. And that eagle-look ! — that serious face ! Never let it be presumed 
that they either belong to his natural being. Be assured that, when he likes, he 
has eyes without a ray of expression, and a face as insignificant as you please. 
No ! there is all the merit — there the art — there the genius of the man. All that 
has been acquired by genius and labour — created by himself ! 

As soon as the great man enters his school-room, the clamorous voice of play is 
ceased on a sudden — every noise is smothered — every whisper hushed. In order to 
obtain this prompt and instantaneous calm, he has not had a single word to utter — 
not the very smallest " Silence," to intimidate the noisy crowd — nothing : his 
simple presence has sufficed. Great, however, is his satisfaction at the effect pro- 
duced, as he seats himself proudly on his stool. These are the triumphs of his 
life — his happiness — his glory, and he is half wild with delight. Enamoured of the 
power of his sway, and sure of his influence, he enjoys to put it to the proof. At 
the moment when it is least expected, he quits his stool, and goes out, leaving the 
school-room to itself and his place unoccupied : he withdraws himself far enough 
off not to be seen, but near enough to hear. It is then that he experiences his 



THE USHER. 263 

liveliest pleasure, and quaffs intoxicating draughts of joy ; for the same silence per- 
vades the school-room, and not a word — not a whisper is heard. His spirit still 
hovers over the spot he has just left. So happy is he at such moments, that were 
he offered a fortune, an empire, a popedom, he would repulse the offer far behind 
him, and reply with noble pride, " Have I not my school-room ?" 

Very generally, the usher in question, in the midst of his childhood's dreams 
and his ambitious hopes of youth, has allowed a vague vision of epaulets to come 
across his inclinations ; and when, at thirty years of age, he becomes usher, his 
dreams are in part realised — his ambitious aspirations well nigh gratified. He has 
the command of a little troop who obey his will : he acts the general, and is happy. 
His very expressions bear the impress of his early ideas, and he gives a military 
turn to all his orders. When the bell announces the hour for going out, he shouts, 
" To horse ! the trumpet sounds !" and when he is about to punish a boy, he 
orders him "into military arrest." It is generally the case also, that in thus 
giving a military stamp to all his actions, he does not forget the characteristic of 
a minute attention to cleanliness : he falls furiously foul of an ill-blacked shoe, and 
grants no pardon to a grease-spot : and, to his honour be it said, it is very rare 
that he does not set the example to his little troop. 

The Usher " by vocation," on account of his extreme rarity, as well as his scru- 
pulous exactitude in the performance of his duties, is eagerly hunted up by the 
masters of " Establishments for Young Gentlemen." He knows it well, for he has 
an inward consciousness of his genius, and a conviction of his own importance. 
And is it not natural enough ? Unfortunately, his conversation smacks strongly of 
this good- opinion of his own person, and has a constant tendency to conceit. There 
is one circumstance also which wounds his feelings and irritates him much — the 
only one, in fact, belonging to his condition which he refuses to acknowledge — and 
that is the name attached to it. Usher ! ill- sounding title — ignoble expression ! 
The very word rouses his indignation ; and be it not for a moment supposed that 
when he writes into the country, he ever adds to his name, by way of title, a deno- 
mination so despicable in his own eyes. No ! he signs his name, " Member of the 
University of Paris," — a high-sounding qualification ! Such a respectable title as 
that cannot fail of producing a marvellous effect upon his provincial friends and 
country cousins. However, as the title is somewhat too general, his vanity has 
contrived to invent others ; and when asked what he is, he replies, " Prefect of a 
Classical Institution," or " Scholastic Censor." 

The Usher " by vocation" has parts of his character which do not belong to this 
rare species alone, but to the whole race of Ushers ; and among these distinctive 
marks, the most so perhaps is his dry and meagre form. The Usher is generally 
thin ; a circumstance which may be attributed either to the continual fits of irrita- 
bility to which he is exposed, or to the " food of the most abundant and salutary 
description" already alluded to, in which he indulges. His high cheekbones and 
skinny hands are browned like a meershaum pipe by exposure to the playground 
sun; and ever since the Revolution of 1830 has proclaimed in France the supremacy 
of the moustache, he has become one of the most devoted admirers of that append- 
age. He never fails of adding this personal adornment to the whiskers already of 
long standing ; and so proud is he of it, that it might be said with truth, that 



264 THE USHER. 

" were the moustachio banished from the earth, you would still find it on the 
Usher's lip." His carriage is stiff and awkward; and he has a je ne sgais quoi in his 
whole appearance that would stamp him " Usher," as well in the most brilliant 
attire as in his shabby coat. 

Behold him in the exercise of his functions ! His head is covered with a black 
cloth skullcap, or a sort of travelling cap, which serves him till it drops in pieces. 
He wears a long great-coat, with the indispensable accessories of a pocket on each 
side, into which he has the habit of thrusting his hands ; and his trowsers, almost 
invariably of an original black, but now grey in appearance and destitute of any spe- 
cies of strap, make vain attempts to reach a pair of large, square-made, dusty boots. 

After the same fashion as this species of professional costume, the Usher has 
adopted a sort of school-room jargon, which has passed traditionally from mouth to 
mouth, and which, " revised, corrected, and with considerable additions," has ended 
by forming a generally- established formulary. Heaven only knows the prodigious 
quantity of imitations of the famous *' Quos ego" which he has made, in order to 

call his boys to order. " The first boy I hear " and there he stops, sure of his 

effect. "A hundred lines " and he names no names ; so that by means of thus 

adroitly stopping short, every boy fancies the dreaded hundred lines hanging over 
his own head. 

There is one certain and undeniable fact — one of those truths which have all the 
force of established law, — and that is, that " the Usher" is the most susceptible 
being imaginable. Heaven preserve you from a conversation with an Usher ! You 
must weigh your every sentence, watch over every stray expression, and guard 
against any possible hidden signification in every word you say, for fear of wound- 
ing his feelings. His susceptibility is ever on the qui vive, and will call you to 
account for every sentence, every expression, every word. Tell him, for instance, 
when he utters his critical anathema against some petty grammatical error in any 
well-known author of the day, that there are others who think the writer a man of 
talent, and he will reply with bitterness, that " he understands you perfectly well; — 
that you mean to say he is incapable of judging, but that he does not care for that — 
he thinks the man a blockhead all the same." Take care, then, what you are about, 
and by paying all due attention to say nothing that he can possibly take up, you 
may enjoy the charms of his conversation as long as you like, and that without the 
smallest retribution. 

It often happens that the Usher is harsh and haughty towards the servants. 
But is that to be wondered at ? In the established hierarchy of schools, the Usher 
occupies the lowest grade ; and the least to be expected is, that he should use his 
authority upon the only inferiors he has. And he uses it with prodigality, like 
a man who pays himself off with interest. 

In spite of that, however, and on account of his many private good qualities, 
I declare without scruple that " the Usher" excites my liveliest sympathies, and 
I witness with pleasure the daily amelioration in his position — an amelioration to 
be attributed to the pains taken by the masters of Establishments for the Education 
of Youth to exclude men of incapacity from among so useful a class of beings. Let 
it be hoped that such as they will soon but seldom reappear, and finally be utterly 
blotted out, to the honour and glory of so respectable a portion of society. 




THE CHARWOMAN.* 



BY CHARLES ROUGET. 




i HE honest woman who humbly devotes the better half 
of her life to the careful rearing and education of her 
children ; who herself measures, before putting into 
other hands, the linen destined for her lord and 
master's new shirts; who possesses an invaluable 
receipt for currant jelly or apricot marmalade ; who 
would regard as an unpardonable enormity any 
attempt at authorship, whether in prose or verse; 
who would consider the writer of the present article, 
to say the least, a very dangerous personage; — 
any honest woman, we repeat, uniting in her person the qualities (become, alas ! 
too rare) here enumerated, may, not without reason, assume to herself the 
pompously vulgar title of Femme de Menage. But it is not of her that we are 
about to treat. 

Seven o'clock has just struck by all the clocks, and Paris is stirring. The bustle 
and noise, hitherto confined to the more remote parts of the city, will soon burst 
forth. A few pedestrians, like La Fontaine's rats, are seen here and there on the 
almost deserted pavement ; labourers going to their work stop at the street corners 

* Charwoman is a very imperfect translation of the French Femme de Menage, but there is no 
better equivalent in English. 

M M 



266 THE CHARWOMAN. 

to light their pipes, or to quench, if possible, the ardent thirst which from daybreak 
seems to assail the Paris workmen ; the streets assume an animated appearance, 
and the houses, hitherto wrapped in the silence of sleep, gradually awaken ; street- 
doors creak on their hinges, with a noise resembling prolonged yawns, and shutters 
are slowly opened, like heavy eyelids ; life again circulates through the endless 
labyrinths of masonry ; the early milkwoman has already called for her cans ; the 
ticket-porter, with his white apron and knot, stands ready for the first errand ; and 
the grocer's boy, stationed at his shop-door sill, with his sleeves tucked above his 
elbows, gazes up and down the street, with good-natured and merry looks, — thus 
completing the most striking features of the streets of Paris at seven o'clock in the 
morning. 

But look at that woman yonder, wending her way carefully through the drowsy 
passengers. Among the sleepy and untidily- dressed females, chiefly domestics, 
whose business calls them forth at this early hour, this woman is an anomaly : her 
calm and undisturbed look, her clear eye, and her brisk walk, all show that she has 
been up some time. Her dress is irreproachable : the most rigid observer, the most 
scrupulous moralist, could find no fault with it, in point of neatness and extreme 
propriety. Never was faded muslin cap more carefully adjusted upon a more pro- 
blematical head of hair; never was neckerchief more neatly crossed ; — in fact, nothing 
in this woman's face or dress would indicate the least trace of an agitated or adven- 
turous existence. 

If it be true that the mind is reflected in the countenance ; that an inward 
wound shows itself outwardly ; that events, by-past and gone, leave their marks 
behind ; that the human heart, resembling the brazen vases in which the merchants 
of Smyrna and Constantinople preserve Eastern perfumes, always betrays some in- 
dication of the essence within, however closely sealed ; — in a word, that every one 
carries the indelible token of his calling, his habits, his virtues, and his vices, — then 
shall we be at a loss to guess this woman's profession, — what reminiscences to call 
to mind at sight of her tidy person, — what rank to assign her in the social scale. 

Look at her : she is unaccompanied, her walk is slow and regular, nothing an- 
nounces that she is in haste. Therefore she is not a workwoman going to her daily 
task, nor has she the mincing effrontery of a lady's maid ; she passes without re- 
plying to the friendly smile wherewith the appearance of each new-comer is greeted; 
she is not of the neighbourhood, for she seems to know nobody; she alone is dressed, 
while the women about her have merely a scanty covering ; she alone seems per- 
fectly awake, while the rest appear at open war with sleep. Who can she be ? — 
Her face, unmeaning, affords no striking indication ; her dress nearly resembles the 
ordinary costume of the lower classes ; still in its arrangement it is neater than a 
servant's, less expensive than a shopkeeper's, and more staid than a grisette's; she 
is very clean and tidy, but it is a cold and formal cleanliness. Know that this 
woman, who is neither tradesman's wife nor shopkeeper, nor cook nor grisette ; 
who is always above thirty years of age, and under fifty ; who smiles not at the 
morning gossips, and whom the vigilant porter of yonder unpretending house 
salutes as she enters with an affable " Good morning," and a friendly " How 
d'ye do," — know, gentle reader, that this woman is a Charwoman. 



THE CHARWOMAN. 267 

The person whom we have just introduced to the reader is a true Parisian pro- 
duction. If any such women are seen out of Paris, they must have been smuggled 
by some extraordinary contrivance. Country Charwomen are like French books 
published in Belgium, — counterfeit editions. It is only in Paris, the city of endless 
resources, that the Charwoman shines forth in all her glory. By profession, she is 
the servant of those persons who are not rich enough to have others, arid yet are 
not so poor as to be compelled to do without attendance ; she represents the lowest 
class of domestics ; she retails her daily labour, — -a servitude which has all the 
miseries of slavery, without any of its advantages, — which obliges her to change 
masters and work all day long. Poor creature ! it is her lot to work by the piece, 
or by the hour, according to the will of her employers, exactly as a hackney-coach 
is engaged. 

Of a disposition the reverse of cheerful, but not repining, the Charwoman, parti- 
cularly in her moments of leisure, affords an example of pious resignation, and for- 
giveness of injuries. Although generally married, her life is solitary in the midst 
of the world ; and her cheerless days of unintermitted labour drag heavily on, side 
by side with those more fortunate beings for whose service she seems to have been 
created. When the Charwoman has no husband, it is because she has lost him, 
and is widowed ; but this loss of the object of her affections, as the phrase goes, 
makes no change in her condition, — her marriage was only an anticipated widow- 
hood. Married at the usual early age of the lower classes, she only exchanged one 
kind of slavery for another ; she left her home when the management of the family, 
and indeed all the drudgery of the house, devolved upon her, to place her neck be- 
neath the iron yoke of servitude as the wife of a brutal and drunken tyrant. Even 
the first days of her union had no honey to sweeten their bitterness ; her illusion, if 
she had cherished any, faded with the flowers she wore in her bosom. Now com- 
menced an existence made up entirely of misery and privations, which resembled 
the dragging of a heavy chain, until the day that it pleased God to relieve her of 
the burden. Alas ! how often are secret sorrows hidden under the apparently im- 
pudent glances of women of the lower orders ! Plow many poor, suffering, and 
desolate creatures have been repulsed by us in the streets, for addressing their sup- 
plications in a harsh and feverish voice, so much do grief and pain change the 
softest natures ! If we knew what gloomy scenes were acted between the wretched 
walls of a garret, by vice, misery, and shame ; if we had sounded the depths of the 
abyss in which virtue struggles with hunger and poverty; if we had seen to what 
degree of brutality a human being may be hurried by drunkenness and misfor- 
tunes, — we should then understand what greatness and heroism are sometimes con- 
cealed beneath a rough and vulgar exterior. Premature wrinkles would reveal 
whole histories of tears and virtuous resignation ; and we should learn to pity and 
respect the being who, conquering her sex's weakness, triumphing over her body as 
she had triumphed over her soul, cheerfully submits to the hardest labour, and 
passes her life uncomplainingly between her brutal, lazy, and drunken husband, 
who spends her earnings and rewards her with blows, and grumbling, ill-tempered 
employers, who take advantage of her pliable temper to make the greater exactions 
on her services. 



268 THE CHARWOMAN. 

We remember to have somewhere heard, pronounced with a provincial accent, 
which gave it still more originality, the following racy proverb : — Si une merluche 
devenait veuve, elle engraisserait.* 

This proverb is especially applicable to the Charwoman. According to the almost 
invariable rule of the working classes, where the wife takes an active part, the hus- 
band does nothing. We mistake : he divides his time between the public-house 
and sleeping off his drunken fits at home, and beating his wife. All Charwomen 
are beaten by their husbands : there is only one exception to this rule, and that is 
in favour of widows. However, it must not be supposed that the Charwoman looks 
more sorrowful on this account. — No : on the contrary, she alone knows the secret 
of her misery ; her life is as closely veiled as her person, and perhaps we should 
never have been able to learn a word about her, if we had not by chance become 
acquainted with one of whom we shall presently have occasion to speak. 

Courageous by profession, long-suffering by temperament, economical by neces- 
sity, and sober by choice, the Charwoman is without exception the most valuable 
of the whole class of domestic servants. The habit of seeing every day new faces 
has given to her countenance an extreme flexibility. If her features retain their 
melancholy expression, it shows that she is utterly indifferent to everything around 
her ; but if she wishes to bring back the smile upon your lips, to make you com- 
municative and confidential, to dissipate the cloud gathered on your forehead, to 
smooth your wrinkled brows, she will devise a thousand ways to divert you from 
your unpleasant thoughts ; she will be insinuating and persuasive till she obliges 
you to listen to her aphorisms of practical philosophy ; she has seen and heard 
much of the world on her journey through life ; and, made wise by her own and 
other people's experience, she has acquired rules of practical wisdom which she 
holds in readiness for all the contingencies of life, and which unfortunately she 
would like to apply to everything. After all, setting aside her individual sorrows 
and personal antipathies, the number of which is very limited, the Charwoman may 
be considered a very good woman. 

Rising with the sun, her first cares are bestowed on her dress. She has to cross 
a whole parish, and sometimes more than one, to reach the scene of her labours ; 
and, with her, neatness is more than a luxury, — more than a mere necessary: it is a 
duty. Otherwise, who would entrust to her the care of their apartments, their 
clothes, and their furniture ? She knows this, and acts accordingly. Her toilet 
finished, and having shaken the mattress of her bed, she is ready to start, — not, 
however, without addressing reiterated and earnest recommendations to the only 
being who shares the joys and sorrows of her life, — the only companion who has 
remained faithful to her in all her misfortunes. 

It is a great error, and unfortunately almost universal, to consider the cat a mis- 
chievous animal. As surely as the dog is the friend of man, so surely is the cat the 
friend of woman, more particularly of the Charwoman. When she is a widow, the 
Charwoman concentrates on her cat all the affection which she formerly bestowed 
on her husband ; for, however bad the treatment she receives at his hands, a woman 
in this class of life is pretty generally attached to the husband allotted her by fate. 
* If a cod were to lose her husband, she would grow fat. 



THE CHARWOMAN. 269 

In inheriting this accession of tenderness, the cat is no doubt aware of the duties 
imposed in return ; and there is consequently soon established between these two 
isolated creatures a touching and mutual exchange of delicate and minute attentions. 
For nothing in the world would the Charwoman part with her cat : death alone 
may separate them, absence never. They are bound one to the other, as the plant 
is attached to the soil, as the Charwoman clings to the good city of Paris. It must 
be understood that Paris to her does not extend beyond the boundaries of her own 
beat, the extreme verge of French territory lying within the barriers. Her country 
is confined to the street in which is situated the house she has inhabited all her life; 
and if at her birth she could have entered the same in the register, we should 
doubtless have found it standing as follows : — " Catherine Bourdon, born the 3rd 
Fructidor, An. VIII., Rue du Faubourg St. Martin, No. 11, on the fifth floor, de- 
partment of the Seine." 

The Charwoman's politics are always favourable to the fallen dynasty, whoever 
may be the actual occupier of the throne. She cares little for the overthrow of 
empires, ministerial crises, or the Eastern question ; her sympathies are all for the 
unfortunate. The name alone of the Republic makes her shudder; and her eyes are 
not yet so dry that she could not find in them, in case of need, a few tears as an 
offering to the memory of Louis XVI. 

Her literary education is not much in advance. Victor, ou V Enfant de la Forest, 
the Gazette des Tribunaux, and the bloody dramas of the Ambigu, are the pillars of 
Hercules beyond which her intelligence doth not go. 

It would extend this paper beyond its limits, if we were to develope to the reader 
her opinions on matters of art ; and her no less curious interpretations of dreams, 
as connected with the lottery, — another fallen power, and consequent subject for 
her unceasing regret. 

Meanwhile, eight o'clock has struck, and the Charwoman's day's work begins. 
Having called, on her way, for your newspaper, into which she never allows herself 
to peep, her first care on entering your room is to draw back the curtains, and 
throw open the shutters, and admit the cheerful light of the sun, and the different 
noises of the street. 

** Good morning, Madame Charlemagne. What o'clock is it?" 

" The half hour to nine has just struck." 

Her first word is an untruth, but it is a friendly and well-meant one. Perchance 
you are fond of your bed, and a little lazily inclined, — as wjio is not ? — and if your 
condition be that of clerk in a government office, punctuality should be your first 
virtue. For this reason, Madame Charlemagne employs this innocent stratagem to 
draw you more certainly from the dolce far niente. In looking to your interest, the 
Charwoman is not unmindful of her own ; and her ruse has the twofold advantage 
of stimulating your activity, and enabling her to get forward with her morning's 
work. Her zeal is most praiseworthy ; and although her little trick is covered by a 
very flimsy veil, it is always successful. You are no sooner risen, than Madame 
Charlemagne begins to persecute you afresh. You are just beginning to enjoy 
your newspaper, so obligingly placed within your reach, quite at your ease; you are 
already deep in the intricate argument of the leading article, or glancing over the 



270 THE CHARWOMAN. 

fascinating columns of the feuilleton, when you are disturbed with — " Sir, here are 
your boots/' which at once precipitates you from the etherial regions where your 
imagination had transported you, to the most common-place reality. But your 
patience has not yet been sufficiently tried. While walking backwards and for- 
wards, making your bed, and polishing the floor, your Charwoman never fails to 
hasten your toilet, gently chiding you all the time for your dilatoriness. Presently 
the fatal sentence is pronounced : you are informed that your breakfast is ready, 
which simple announcement, in your Charwoman's mouth, might be thus construed: 
" It is just nine o'clock, Sir ; if you do not make haste, you will certainly not be 
at your office by ten. Besides, Sir, I have other people to attend to, and must 
be off." 

Obs. — The breakfast invariably consists of a cup of cafe au lait, and a chop or 
cutlet as a standing dish. 

Having taken your seat, you are allowed a few minutes' respite. This is the 
time for familiar and confidential chat. If you make the smallest advance towards 
conversation, your Charwoman, leaning on her broom-handle, which attitude gives 
a picturesque air to her recital, will narrate to you, for the hundredth time at least, 
various little anecdotes concerning her pet cat ; or she will give you an account of 
the miraculous cures performed in her house by an empirical shoemaker, who pos- 
sesses an infallible remedy against the headache and the heartburn, — for the Char- 
woman has ever been the guardian angel of quacks and charlatans. She possesses 
innumerable recipes for the cooking of eggs with a single sheet of paper, and for 
allaying fever with a piece of burnt copper. She knows, also, how to take stains 
out of clothes ; and can concoct a variety of apocryphal beverages under the in- 
offensive name of cooling drinks. This woman is an universal panacea. For every 
disease she knows a remedy ; and if anything can surpass her science, it is her 
desire to make herself useful. 

We can vouch for the truth of the following anecdote, which we cannot resist the 
pleasure of introducing here, since it illustrates, in a simple and touching manner, 
how near strong affection and self-denial may approach to heroism : — An old bachelor, 
a superannuated banker's clerk, employed for many years a poor woman, whose 
weak state of health almost rendered her incapable of her daily toil. The man was 
nervous and irritable ; and all the Charwoman's natural forbearance and sweet 
temper could not prevent a violent quarrel, three or four times a week, with her 
passionate and gouty employer. These two beings, lost amongst the immense 
population of Paris, and almost alone in the world, could never agree. Fortunately, 
these quarrels, like thunder-storms, did not last long : however, they were only 
made up to break out on the next occasion, notwithstanding mutual vows of peace 
and eternal friendship. 

" Madame," would the old man say, striking the arm of his easy chair, in which 
he was nailed by the gout, " you'll be the death of me, that 's certain." 

" Why, I'm ." 

" Hold your tongue, woman ! You wish to kill me, banging the door after you 
in that manner. You almost drive me distracted. Will you please to shut the door 
gently, and begone about your business ?" 



THE CHARWOMAN. 271 

And the poor woman would go, her heart full, and tears standing in her eyes, 
but only to return on the morrow, when all would be forgotten. One day, how- 
ever, the storm was more violent than usual. The old man's anger became so un- 
governable that his gout flew to his brain, and he fell back in his chair stiff and 
cold. For three long months, the faithful Charwoman watched night and day by 
the bedside of her insensible master. She would not leave him for an instant ; the 
savings of twenty years were expended in medicines ; the most skilful doctors were 
consulted, and most unremitting care lavished on the patient ; but all in vain, — 
it was impossible to save him, and he died. 

Nothing could equal the acute grief of the poor Charwoman. She upbraided 
herself as the cause of her old master's death. She never left the body until it was 
to be interred, when, subduing her grief, she followed it alone to its final resting- 
place, nor would she leave the burial-ground till the grave was filled, and the turf 
replaced. A week after, she died in the hospital, and was buried in the paupers' 
grave-yard ; for nought remained of all her savings, but the remembrance of a good 
action, which, if it finds its reward in heaven, is no preservation on earth against 
poverty and its attendant evils. 

The Charwoman generally has a great predilection for bachelors. We dare not 
assert that this is in hatred of Hymen, of whom formerly she had so much reason 
to complain ; but certain it is that a bachelor's service is what suits her best. 
Perhaps their mutual loneliness, or a kind of reciprocity of tastes and opinions, may 
help to bring them together. It not unfrequently happens, on the decline of her 
career, that the Charwoman, surmounting her matrimonial repugnance, and ab- 
juring former prejudices, is united, by indissoluble bands, to an old bachelor, whose 
nice little income she has long coveted, — it being partly the result of her own 
economy and care. 

There is a truth which has passed into a proverb among all classes of society, 
ancient and modern, and is universally admitted without question. It is shown on 
the stage and in books ; it is constantly proclaimed and proved in the newspapers ; 
and is much dwelt upon both in town and country, — in fact, everywhere. This in- 
contestible axiom is, that from time immemorial servants have robbed their masters. 
Let us lose no time in adding, that Charwomen are not included in the class of 
servants. 

The Charwoman is a living example thrown upon the world to demonstrate to all 
that the immortality of the soul is not an illusion, and that the troubles of this life 
are only to prepare us for the joys of a future existence : such is, at least, her own 
idea. For ourselves, we persist in considering the Charwoman a faithful and 
attached attendant. Setting aside a few exceptions, happily very rare, we declare 
that she has no equal for brushing a coat, and fine-drawing a torn garment. She 
extends her care and affection even to inanimate objects ; and, in the benevolence 
of her heart, takes the same interest in her master's property as in her master him- 
self. If there is, in the Charwoman's estimation, anything superior to a bachelor, 
it is a bachelor's furniture and clothes. 

Observe what precaution she takes, with what care she handles even the smallest 
article of furniture. She alone possesses the secret of preserving antiques. In less 



272 THE CHARWOMAN. 

expert hands, the old relics which her master manages to keep in such excellent 
preservation would long since have crumbled into dust. But it is in the care of his 
wardrobe that the Charwoman shines most conspicuous. Convinced of the truth, 
that if the coat does not make the man, it at least improves him, she reserves all her 
most delicate and assiduous attention for that garment. She brushes, smoothes, 
shakes, and folds it with admirable solicitude ; she loves to renovate its time-worn 
texture, and to prevent, by a few timely stitches, the anticipated flaws ; she alone 
has the talent to restore to their original appearance the whitened seams of this 
cherished garment, — for, alas ! men's coats turn white even sooner than their hair. 
When the clothes and furniture are all in order, — when there does not remain a 
single stain to remove, nor a corner of the room unswept, the Charwoman quietly 
replaces her shawl on her shoulders, takes off her working apron (the official 
preservative of her walking dress), and repairs to a fresh scene of successful 
labours. 

When the Charwoman has finished her daily round, she returns home in the 
evening ; and having spent the whole day in the service of others, she enjoys at her 
ease a little liberty. Her happy quarter of an hour begins when she enters her garret, 
her kitten's playful gambols recalling the joyous days of her childhood ; and in the 
midst of her own little household cares, she indulges a thousand dreams and fond 
illusions. It must have been for the Charwoman that the proverb, " As she makes 
her bed, so must she lie upon it," was invented ; for she never makes her bed till 
evening, which is one of the distinguishing features of her profession. 

After a certain time, as the Charwoman advances in years, and becomes incapable 
of going her daily round, she solicits the place of pew-opener in her parish church, 
for she is sure to become religious in her old age; or, if such a consolation is denied 
her, she dies alone in her poverty ; she dreads the hospital ; and the woman who 
has passed her life in attending to the wants of others, has had no time to think of 
her own. 




THE "CANDT."* 



BY JOANNY AUGIER. 




1831 



YONS is the central residence of a class of operatives 
who ten years ago were almost unknown in Europe, 
and even in France their name had not then gone 
forth beyond the limits of the great manufacturing 
city, and a few villages of the department of the 
Rhone, where several silk- factories are established. 
But in the eventful period that followed the revolu- 
tion of 1830, the " Canut" made himself conspi- 
cuous by the prominent part he took in the bloody 
and 1834 decimated the population of the second 



disturbances which 
city of France. 

It is not our province to discuss politics or commerce, nor is it our intention to 
inquire how far the Lyons workmen were justified in their insurrection ; our object 
is to observe the " Canut" in his private life, a life of persevering industry, which 
contributes to a great extent to the commercial prosperity of the country. 

It would be a difficult task to discover the etymology of the word " Canut," the 
name given to the Lyons weavers, whether employed in manufacturing silk, velvet, 
or shawls. Perhaps it is derived from " Canette," the bobbin upon which the silk 
thread is rolled. Grammatici certant, et adhuc sub judice lis est. 

Of the hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants of Lyons and its suburbs, no less 
than ninety thousand are " Canuts ;" but it is not in the city that the monotonous 

* " Canut" is the name given to the operative silkweavers of Lyons. 

N N 



274 



THE " CANUT." 



and wearying noise of their looms is most heard ; all the surrounding villages, and 
more particularly the suburbs of La Guillotiere, Vaise, La Croix Rousse, St. Just, 
Les Brotteaux, are the principal seats selected by the " Canuts" for the exercise of 
their industry, in consequence of the cheapness of house-rent, food, wine, and beer. 
Yet these necessaries of life are dear enough to condemn the " Canut" to daily 
privations ; and those who are interested in the welfare of this respectable class of 
operatives regret that their wages or profits are not more adequate to their wants t 
Their place of abode is confined and insalubrious ; their food is scanty and un- 
wholesome ; and the want of bodily exercise generally disposes the " Canut" to a 
peculiar exaltation of mind, combined with great physical debility. These are 
permanent causes of suffering and misery, but he has also to contend with discou- 
ragement and improvidence. The slightest illness, a few days out of work, are 
sufficient to reduce him to penury ; and if his struggle with poverty be protracted, 
we read of those fearful disturbances and bloody riots which, from the last century 
down to 1831 and 1834, have been so fatal to the prosperity of the great manufac- 
turing city. 

The " Canut's" face is pale and thin, his neck long and stiff, his back arched, 
his body slender, his arm bony ; he is bowlegged, his knees are prominent, his feet 
large and flat. This is not indeed a very flattering portrait, and there are perhaps 
some exceptions ; after all, the " Canut's" ungainly appearance is not his nature's 
fault, but the effect of his work. 

Morally considered, the " Canut" is irritable, sulky, obstinate, vindictive, and 
diffident, but industrious and orderly : he puts up with no mark of contempt, neither 
does he lack courage ; he assists his friends in distress, subscribes to all bene- 
volent associations, and opposes despotic and illegal measures, whoever may be their 
promoters. He is illiterate, but he makes up for his want of education by a certain 
natural intelligence ; and if the nature of his laborious avocations did not preclude 
the exercise of his mental faculties, and too often depress his spirits and counteract 
his desire of moral emancipation, more remarkable men would emerge from the 
obscurity of his class, to which the illustrious Jacquard opened a wide career. 

The " Canut's" voice is slow, drawling, and monotonous ; his language abounds 
with cant words and slang phrases, and forms a vocabulary quite peculiar to his class. 
Every workshop in the suburbs of Lyons is lighted by two small flat lamps, sus- 
pended over the looms by a piece of thick twine. The " Canut" generally works in 
company with a girl and an apprentice. Their conversation is free, and is frequently 
interrupted by quarrels between the apprentice and the " Canut," made up at the 
intercession of the girl. Take the following short specimen of a dialogue immedi- 
ately succeeding a fall-out. Time — evening; scene — a workshop; speakers — a 
" Canut," his apprentice, and a work-girl. 

The " Canut." — It is very kind of you, Georgette, to take that boy's part. But 
if he were my son, he would often have my knife-handle about his ears. 

The Girl. — There, that will do ; we are a lazy set together. (To the Apprentice) — 
Fetch me that stool, Michel. And you, Monsieur Savournin, lend me your lamp, 
for it is so dark here that I cannot see at all. 

The " Canut." — Cannot see, Georgette! then sing us something. 

The Girl. — With all my heart. But first shut the window : I feel the cold coming in. 



THE "CAXUT." 275 

The Apprentice . — What song is it to be, Ma'mselle ? 

The Girl. — The one written by the factory clerk, to be sure ; "the 'Canut' in love." 

The Apprentice. — What ! do you know that ? 

The " Canut." — Don't we all know it, blockhead ? 

The Girl. — {Singing in a drawling voice, and stuttering.) 

SONG. 

THE " CANUT" IN LOVE. 

Fanchon, oh ! hearken to my tale 

Of love, list what I say ; 
For as I work I never fail 
To think of you each day. 
My truth believe, 
I'll ne'er deceive, 
To you I'll ever faithful prove ; 
And when in love, 
Think of the charm 
Of walking with you arm in arm. 
Fanchon, for you I always sigh, 
Oh 1 do not think I'd tell a he; 
For, even now, pit pat it goes, 
While thus my feelings I disclose. 
Whene'er my Fanchonette I see, 

I go to make myself quite smart, 
And run to meet her on the quay 
In hopes to touch her cruel heart. 
And when at night, 
In slumbers light 
I never can my eyelids close, 
Nor ever taste a sweet repose, ! 
For oft I fain would have a peep, 
Of you who just below me sleep. 
Oh ! how I wish, that, for the sake 
Of watching hy you till you wake, 
The deuce himself the floor would take. 

The " Canut" (delighted). — Egad, Georgette, it does one good to hear you sing; 
you made me quite forget my corns. 

The Girl (smiling, and casting down her eyes). — Hold your tongue, silly 
fellow, &c. &c. 

The interior of the " Canut's" dwelling is remarkable for its wretchedness, its 
confusion, and too often its dirt. One or two looms, a common chest of drawers 
sadly out of repair, a deal safe, half protected by brass wires, and a green cotton 
curtain ; three or four ricketty chairs almost destitute of rushes, a miserable bed in 
a loft, which is reached by means of a ladder placed against a trap- door in the 
ceiling, compose the whole of his furniture. But these are absolute necessaries. 
When the " Canut" indulges in any luxury, you may see the walls of his room 
ornamented with rough prints, wretchedly coloured, and representing such subjects 
as The Wandering Jew, Pyramus and Thisb£, Genevieve of Brabant, &c. Again, 



276 



on the mantel-piece are scattered in confusion a common bust of Napoleon, a large 
plaster- of-paris cat, pigeon's eggs and preserved fruits carefully placed in a glass- 
case, two gourds hollowed into the shape of bottles ; and in the centre, under a 
square glass-case, a blown model of a hamlet, with its cottages, mill, river, and trees; 
or the Wise Men's Offerings — the whole embellished with cut paper, shells, and moss. 

The panes of the window are of oil-paper instead of glass, and on the window- 
ledge are invariably placed drinking- cups and earthen pipkins for cooking, or 
flower-pots containing roots of favourite flow r ers, as wall-flowers and stocks ; 
there is, also, a jar containing plums or cherries preserved in brandy, the sight of 
which suffices to cheer the " Canut's" heart every morning, and which he is proud 
to offer every friend or relation who comes to see him. 

The " Canut's" daily meals are three in number. He breakfasts on a kind of 
white cheese, flavoured with garlic, butter, and onions ; his dinner is composed of 
pickled pork, or potatoes and white cheese ; and at his supper he again returns to 
his favourite cheese, with perhaps a piece of stock-fish, equal, in bis estimation, to 
eel or turbot, His ordinary beverage is wine at three-pence per bottle, though, 
too frequently, he is obliged to content himself with water. 

The " Canut" is a lover of tobacco, but he only takes it in the shape of snuff: he 
holds pipes, and cigars particularly, in the greatest contempt. 

He rises early, and goes to bed late. During the day, he interrupts his work to 
take a short nap about noon. The monotony of his daily labour is only occasionally 
relieved by the visit of the clerk of the factory * for which he is at work, or the call 
of a friendly neighbour who takes in a Lyons paper, and entertains him with an 
account of the latest news, the state of the country, the speeches of the most 
eminent deputies, &c. In the evening, by the light of his little loom-lamp, he 
enlivens his labour with some more agreeable occupation, as reading a play, or one 
of Ducray-Dumesnil's novels, or singing, as he feels inclined, a sentimental ballad, 
or a patriotic song. 

It has frequently been said that costume is a faithful type of the man : the 
" Canut" is a confirmation of the truth of the observation, and a Lyons citizen 
never fails to recognize him at first sight. His clothes are as regularly uniform 
as regimentals ; he never varies their cut or colour, nor the materials of which 
they are made. 

All the year round, the "Canut" wears no coat in-doors, his arms having no 
other covering than his shirt-sleeves. When young, he wears a Greek cap ; and 
as he grows old, this he changes for a cotton or woollen night-cap. He may be 
seen wearing an old pair of trowsers of indescribable colour, somewhat approaching 
to a red ; two slips of cloth list serve him for braces, when his hips are not promi- 
nent enough to render supporters unnecessary. He does not indulge in the luxury 
of stockings, and an old pair of shoes deck his feet. 

When he walks abroad, and particularly on holydays, he always wears a hat with 
an immense crown ; his body-coat is light blue with gilt buttons ; his trowsers are 
either of nankeen or a light drab woollen cloth ; his shirt collar, very high and stiff, 
goes over his ears, and the front, small plaited, is ornamented with a pin sur- 

* The silk-weaver in Lyons generally works at home, one estahlishmcnt not unfrequently 
supplying him with employment the whole year round. 



THE " CANUT. 



277 



mounted by a golden fly : round his neck he wears an embroidered white kerchief. 
His waistcoat is invariably either white or yellow ; his stockings are of blue cotton, 
and he walks in thin low shoes, tied with large black ribbon bows. He constantly 
saws the air with his hand, and sometimes even strikes persons walking in the street. 
When he desires to assume an air of importance or ease, he carries a walking-stick, 
which he whirls somewhat after the same fashion that a drum-major handles his staff. 

Having spoken of the " Canut' s" work, let us now see what are his enjoyments. 

First, and as a general rule, Sunday and Monday are his only holydays ; he would 
be unable to enjoy himself any other day. As a preliminary to his two days' relaxation 
he repairs at an early hour to the barber's to be shaved. Shortly afterwards, he 
walks to the market-place, where he is sure to find some of his fellow- workmen, 
with whom he passes three or four hours discussing the price of silk, their employer's 
arrangements, the prospect of trade, the measures of government, and the state of 
public affairs. After dinner he plays at bowls, or goes a fishing. In the evening he 
may be seen quietly seated in the pit of a minor theatre, where he successively 
swallows two melodramas and four vaudevilles, trying to retain in his memory the 
most striking passages and the best songs. Or perhaps he takes a seat with three 
or four friends round a table in a public-house, to pass the evening at cards, singing 
drinking-songs. On these occasions, he generally drinks too much, and will not 
stir till the lights are put out, when he staggers into the street with his companions, 
to reach his home the best way he can. 

The " Canut" is also very fond 
of witnessing the exibition of a 
kind of puppet- show (mar ionnettes), 
quite peculiar to the country, where 
the principal person of the drama, 
in the style of the Italian Pulci- 
nello, and the English Punch, is 
called Guignol, and is a type of 
the " Canut" himself, who laughs 
as loud as any at the jests merrily 
pointed at himself. 

Sometimes, again, the " Canut" 
will spend a whole morning before 
a street-organ player: after laying 
out a penny in the purchase of the 
book of songs, he will follow every 
verse with the utmost attention 
and delight. 

However shy and silent, our hero 
may be induced to break through 
his reserve, and pay his tribute to 
love. On such an occasion, he is 
eminently gallant, and becomes a 
true lady-killer. But the object of 
his passion must be an apprentice 




278 



THE <f CANUT. 3 



or factory-girl engaged in his own employment. It is very rarely that he pays any 
attention to nursery-maids or cooks, nor does he care for the peasant-girls ; all his 
feelings are engrossed by the apprentice or factory- girl, his true female. When in love, 
the "Canut" neglects nothing, omits nothing — seductive smiles, sweet words, nume- 
rous attentions, small presents, — he leaves nothing untried; and most fortunate does 
he deem himself when his pains are rewarded, and his love at last returned. Let us 
add to his honour, that his court is always with a view to the lawful and honourable 
state of wedlock, and that his engagement is constantly sanctioned by the church. 

After all, marriage suits his inclination, and when he remains single, it is in reality 
because he cannot help himself. 

The enjoyments above described must be understood to be those of the unmarried 
" Canut," who has not yet sown his wild oats. When at last his choice is made, 
and he settles down, a great change in his appearance and morals immediately takes 
place. 

Imprimis, and considered physically, he grows fat and corpulent; morally, he 
generally becomes a good husband and a good father, and every year adds another 
child to his family. He shaves himself every Sunday, frequents no more public- 
houses, and goes to the play only once a quarter, in company with his wife. The 
married ". Canut" is very regular in his attendance at church on Sundays, and the 
merriment of his little family forms his greatest enjoyment. 

Every year he has three grand days devoted to convivial meetings with his 
relatives, and sometimes with some of his fellow weavers : these days are Easter 
Sunday, Whit Sunday, and Christmas Day. They generally " go off" with great 
eclat. For these occasions are particularly reserved a leg of mutton, a turkey, and 
a favourite dish of sausages, — the " Canut" knows no greater luxuries ; and the 
discussion of these delicacies is seasoned by cheerful conversation, hearty laughter, 
and comic songs. 

All things considered, we like the " Canut" better married than single. Married, 
he has in store a certain share of happiness : he may save a few shillings, and 
though he has no chance of making a fortune, he may, at least, secure by providence 
the necessaries of life for his declining years. Single, he has no better perspective 
than cheerless loneliness, toil, poverty, and the hospital. 

Such is the " Canut" — the industrious workman, whose labour has made Lyons 
the richest manufacturing city in France, and who is there treated with ridicule and 
degrading contempt, — he is abused for his slovenliness, his ignorance, his poverty, 
and his sulkiness. It is admitted that all reforms, to be safe, must proceed gra- 
dually ; and the time has come to commence in earnest the work of the " Canut's" 
emancipation. His is very far from the improved condition of most other working- 
classes in France, and he has a right to expect, in return for all the wealth incessantly 
created by his labour, a more just allotment of the comforts of life. Government 
might easily, without yielding to threatening riots and armed insurrections, and 
prompted only by kindred feelings of humanity, provide for this respectable class of 
workmen a better system of education, and pay at the same time more attention to 
their material wants. Thus let us hope that some day, while their exertions contri- 
bute in the same degree as at present to the national prosperity, they may enjoy, with 
the glory of being unrivalled by foreign artisans, a less scanty share of happiness. 







THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 



BY RAOUL PERRIN. 




NGLISH READERS, are you desirous to know the 
French Commercial Traveller? In France, at the 
present day, the Commercial Traveller is an essentially 
malleable and cosmopolite being, who has been invested 
with a form, a quality, and a name. The Commercial 
Traveller is a worshipper of weights and measures, 
of sugar-cane and ginger, of broad- cloth and calico. 
The Commercial Traveller is the most active expres- 
rf "^ sion of mercantile civilization, the nee plus ultra of the 
honour and dignity of the warehouse ; the arterial element of the manufacturer, the 
consignee, and the wholesale dealer ; the vade semper of over- stocked merchants ; 
the beloved purveyor of the packer, the coach-porter, and the waggon proprietor ; 
the cherished Shiloh of mine host, the chambermaid, and the boots ; the oracle of 
the table d'hote ; the privileged guest of the tap-room and of the billiard-room ; 
the . But what is not the Commercial Traveller ? Was ever a pun perpe- 
trated, a merry tale related, an enigma propounded, or a conundrum put, where he 
was not ? Was ever a good thing said, or a droll story told, in his absence ? No. 
It will therefore be admitted that the Commercial Traveller is an eminently agree- 
able and useful member of society. 

The class of Commercial Travellers is subdivided to infinity, into categories, sec- 
tions, types, and prototypes ; but seven species are particularly distinguishable, 



280 



THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 



namely, the Travelling Partner, the Interested Traveller, the Traveller on Commis- 
sion, the Traveller with a Roving Commission, the District Traveller, the Traveller 
on Foot, and the Pedlar. 

The Travelling Partner may be recognized by the gravity of his countenance, the 
cautious prudence of his manners, and the dignity of his demeanour. At the inn, 
he takes his place at the least crowded part of the table, eats quietly, utters not a 
word, watches all that is passing, frowns, methodically folds his table-napkin, takes 
a toothpick, rises, and strolls into the town to call on his customers. His entrance 
into a house is calm and dignified, and regulated in proportion to the importance of 
his transactions with its head. One glance round the warehouse enables him to 
calculate the wants of his customer ; and before the latter has had time to recollect 
the state of his shelves, the Travelling Partner has written a list of orders in his 
order-book, saying, " You are in want of such a thing ; such an article sells very 
well with you ; I will send you so much of this, and such a quantity of that, &c." 
This is the way the Partner generally procures very extensive orders, by taking, 
as it were, the dealer by assault, and not giving him time to edge in a word 
about refusal, stock-on-hand, or what not. Besides, being the head of the house 
for which he travels, he has it in his power to make concessions, and to afford ad- 
vantages; and it would not be becoming to let him leave the shop without an order. 
The Travelling Partner will obtain a commission where any other Traveller from 
his own house might seek one in vain : the former is always the more successful. 
This is the natural effect of certain small influences which ever prevail with the un- 
conscious dealer. The Travelling Partner's dress is neither gaudy, tight, nor loose. 
It is clean, of good materials, carefully brushed, and always has the gloss of newness. 

The Travelling Partner never wears more than one glove, always a new glove : he 
carries an old and ragged one in his right hand. Recently, and particularly since 
the Revolution of 1830, he has ventured to wear the real India silk pocket-handker- 
chief, printed at Lyons. 

The Interested Traveller is of problematical age, generally between thirty-five 
and forty, and most commonly wears a wig and false teeth. If by chance his own 
hair and teeth are good, he takes care to be provided with a small leaden comb, the 
constant use of which conceals the depredation of time on his head. He is careful 
to comb before his ears the straggling hair that he has left ; and when he speaks, he 
opens his mouth just wide enough to give free action to his tongue. The Interested 
Traveller is an interesting biped, generally short, somewhat stout, inclined to corpu- 
lency, and a good fellow withal. He is rather dandified in his dress, uses eau-de- 
Cologne, if not other perfume, wears a white neckcloth, a white waistcoat, and black 
coat and trousers, — not modern dandyism this. On the forefinger of his right hand 
he displays a heavy gold keeper ; his shirt studs are of mother-of-pearl or ivory ; 
and his gold watch-chain is twisted cl la Vaucanson. At table, he talks little, but 
well and slowly ; his conversation is tinged with a slight shade of affectation, and 
a tendency to exaggeration pervades it, but passes unobserved under an air of 
frankness and veracity. The Interested Traveller does not mix with the common 
herd of Travellers in the inn : he takes his coffee at the table d'hote, rises, con- 
verses a moment with the landlord, calls the boy to give his boots a brush, and fetch 



THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 281 

a porter to carry his sample portmanteau. With his customers he is, as every- 
where else, polite, obliging, and obsequious : he kisses the baby, pats the spaniel, 
pays a compliment to the young lady behind the counter, and offers a pinch of snuff 
to the master of the shop. He inquires respecting the state of the vintage, foretels 
the result of the season, speaks at some length on the state of the grain-market, 
obligingly inquires after Madame's health, and invites her husband to come and see 
him in Paris. " We will dine at the Rocher," laughs the Traveller ; adding, in a 
lower key, " and discuss a bottle of Ai, eh!" Briefly, he obtains an order, often 
a very extensive one. 

The Traveller on Commission was, under the Empire, an apocryphal being, — a 
creature of the imagination, or at least of a very doubtful nature : after the Restora- 
tion, he became materialized, — acquired a head, body, and arms; and, since the Three 
Days, he has so identified himself with his part, and has so scrupulously believed in 
the perfectibility of the present epoch, that he has rendered himself the terror of 
shopkeepers, warehouses, and trade in general. For the reader to form an idea of 
this ingenious creation of the century, let him imagine a man about fifty years of 
age, rather over than under, the proprietor of a head crowned with an aureola of 
grey hair, well greased, and brushed flat off his temples. His dress consists of a 
threadbare coat, trousers gathered round the waist, a Spanish cloth stock, a white 
hat, and boots down at the heels. Thus equipped, somewhat " en Robert Macaire," 
he affects the dandy, and now and then shakes the snuff from his faded shirt bosom, 
to display the hair ring with a small diamond, the gift of his last conquest. The 
Commission Traveller has visited every country of the known world ; he has seen 
all, examined all, observed all, and appreciated all. He knows all ways and means, 
is familiar with all resources, all marches and countermarches, all ins and outs, — in 
a word, with the whole arcana of his trade, his profession, or his art. Mention to 
him an important house : he pauses a moment, but do not think he hesitates. 
Gracefully throwing himself back in his chair, and placing his thumb in the arm- 
hole of his velveteen waistcoat with carved buttons, by way of preamble, he will 
reply, with an intelligent nod, " Such a house ? Of course I know it. I was clerk 
in that same house, with the head partner, in the year IX." Name a merchant : 
" I know him; he was at the entering-desk when I was shipping-clerk." Mention a 

banker's name : " I know M. ; he was collecting- clerk at 's when I ." 

The Commission Traveller has, in short, been everything, has done everything, and 
actually is nothing, and nothing does. For instance, we cannot with truth deny 
that he knows by heart the names of all the hotels in France, and all their respective 
good and bad qualities ; he knows all their cooks, the dishes in which they excel, 
and what to order at every inn he stops at; finally, he is on excellent terms with the 
maids, — not that he is generous ; on the contrary, he is extremely stingy. Gene- 
rosity indeed ! civilization and positivism have abolished the virtue; but, as an offset 
to his niggardliness, he is bland, facetious, and courteous. He is earnest in his 
praises of the chambermaid's charms, congratulates the cook on his sauces, and is 
by no means sparing of his compliments to mine host. 

He invariably prefers the society of young travellers — novices on the road. 
And why ? — Because he is a capital hand at dominoes, billiards, whist, and dcarte ; 

o o 



282 



THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 












and, once in the coffee-room, he knows how to make the novice pay for his (the 
Commission Traveller's) coffee, his glass of absinthe, his cigar, and his bottle of 
beer, which is so much saved. The Traveller on Commission (we ask his pardon, 
but truth must out) is a perfect Diogenes. If ever you should perchance be present 
at an indelicate conversation, in which you feel yourself under the necessity of 
abstaining from taking a share, and which makes the lady seated near you blush 
and cast down her eyes, look at the head of the table, and ten to one but you 
observe a dirty wretch, with untrimmed beard, bottle-nose, protuberant chin, and a 
dull, bleared eye, that looks for all the world like dirty mother-of-pearl : — that man 
is a Commission Traveller, — Roger Bontemps in propria, — Aretin resuscitated, — 
the obscene story-teller, who respects neither the table at which he is seated, 
nor the company present, even though females chance to be of the party. We 
have said that tradesmen dislike him, and dread his visits. In order to get rid 
of him, they give him an order, — a small one it is true, but what matters that ? 
He takes care to double it when he sends the order to the firm who has had the 
misfortune to trust their samples to his care. When the goods reach the trades- 
man, he sees how he has been tricked, swears loudly and deeply at the rascally 
Traveller, and leaves the goods for the manufacturer's account. Meanwhile, the 
Commission Traveller has returned to Paris, touched his per-centage, and wants no 
more. He has cheated both customers and his principal; but his profits are realized, 
and he will begin anew. 

The Traveller with a Roving Commission* is generally a tall, fair young man; he 
is the exquisite of the road, and the Lovelace of the trade ; he enjoys a good salary, 
has an indefinite daily allowance, and is in his principal's confidence. Not unfre- 
quently, he has received the rudiments of a good education ; and, in such a case, 
he is generally inclined to pedantry. Sometimes he has taken a degree, when he 
affects a purity of language that would have enraptured Vaugelas and Le Tellier. 
At every town in which he makes a stay, he takes a bath, nurses himself with the 
utmost care, and renews the air in his elastic cushions. He always smokes real 
Havannahs, wears yellow gloves and octagonal glasses, and carries a bottle of salts. 
At table, he drinks Bordeaux- Medoc and Seltzer water, cannot touch plain beef or 
mutton, turns up his nose at ordinary dishes, and reserves himself for the second 
course and the dessert. In short, he eats and drinks little, and always rises first 
from table. To see his important step, his Parisian toilette, his polite but rather 
stiff manners, his delicate appetite, and the respect paid him by everybody in the 
inn, one is naturally tempted to say to oneself, " That young man is certainly 
the representative of a good house." He does not regularly attend the coffee-house; 
and when he enters it, it is only to read the papers, previously to paying his calis. 
On entering a tradesman's warehouse, he politely bows, addresses himself to the 
principal, and offers his services with an easy unembarrassed air. He introduces 
himself with the simple phrase, " Sir, I represent the firm of ." On this, his 

* This sea-term is the nearest English equivalent of Voyageur libre, which answers to our English 
Mercantile Traveller. The six different kinds of Travellers described in the text are peculiar to 
France. Though a Traveller on his own account, to all intents and purposes, we do not include the 
seventh (the Pedlar) under the designation of " Commercial Traveller." — Ed. 



THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 283 

invariable opening sentence, he pauses. If the tradesman wishes to give him 
an order, well and good : he gives it forthwith. Otherwise, the Traveller on a 
Roving Commission is too well acquainted with the dignity of his house to descend 
to supplication, or cringe for an order. The Traveller on a Roving Commission 
always travels in the coupe of the diligence. He is gallant to the fair sex, and civil 
to everybody, even to the conductor and the postilion. He was the type of the 
elegant, the refined Traveller; but he has passed away. Railways and compe- 
tition have driven him from the road : the Traveller on a Roving Commission is 
no more. 

The District Traveller is a self-sufficient, smooth-tongued, pert, little whipper- 
snapper of a school-boy, between eighteen and two-and-twenty, with a beard on his 
upper lip. He is the peacock of the profession, — curled, perfumed, and full of 
conceit. He wears a waistcoat that counts only three buttons, and boots of glazed 
leather, and his trousers fit tight to his skin. He carries in his gloved hand a 
curious-twisted holly stick ; and his hair hangs in ringlets outside the collar of 
his coat. He is allowed ten or twelve francs a day for his expenses, and his salary 
is between a thousand and twelve hundred francs per annum. His route is traced 
out for him on the map ; he has to take so many towns on his journey, and is 
allowed a day in one, two days in another, according to their importance, so as to 
go over the ground in a given time. He modestly travels in the rotonde of the 
diligence ; and, on alighting in a town, he employs his time as follows : — In the 
first place, he takes a stroll through the town, to stretch his legs, and acquire an 
appetite. It is really too soon to call on his customers, who cannot have left their 
beds, argues he ; for, in the country, tradesmen are not early risers, and are very 
fond of enjoying the far niente. They make money slowly, it is true, but very 
easily. Secondly, he repairs to his inn to breakfast, — a meal that he dwells upon 
with delight. This he may do, especially as it does not cost him a farthing more. 
The guest may or may not have an appetite : he always has — in the eyes of the 
landlord. The District Traveller is so well persuaded of this truth, that he would 
rather eat breakfast enough for two, than not eat enough for one. Thirdly, he 
repairs to the cofFee-house, takes his coffee, plays for it, and loses; plays again, and 
a second time loses ; plays again, and again loses. He pays, in the end, for the 
coffee of all the company, and this costs him eighteen francs. He must, at all 
hazards, indemnify himself for this loss ; and, for this purpose, he stays a day over 
his time in the town. When in the towns, Travellers play in the coffee-houses, 
and so lighten their expenses ; but those diligences are ruination ! Fourthly, one 
o'clock striking, he sallies out to call on his customers. But tradesmen do not very 
cordially receive the District Traveller. " Sir," one will say, " we are in want of 

nothing ; " or, "If you should be passing this way to-morrow . " ' ' Travellers ! ' ' 

doles out a third, " one sees nothing but Travellers." " I have had enough of 
Travellers," echoes a fourth. To all these more or less flattering observations, the 

District Traveller bows, and expresses his thanks. " Sir, you ," a tradesman 

will begin : the Traveller interrupts him with, " Sir, I assure you the pattern is 
entirely new, and exclusive to our house." The Traveller meets " Sir, you are 
importunate," with " Three months' credit, and three per cent, off; you will never 



284 



THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 






have such another offer." " My dear Sir, you are losing your time." " Sir, I am 
travelling with that object in view ! " When a shopkeeper perceives the approach 
of a District Traveller, he cries, before the latter enters his shop, " Sir, it is com- 
pletely useless ; we are well stocked with every article in which we deal," — while 
not unfrequently his shop does not contain an ell of ribbon, or an ounce of brown 
sugar, or a pound of indigo. It must be confessed that a more unwelcome recep- 
tion could scarcely be given to a tinker or scissors-grinder, nor even to one's land- 
lord the day after quarter-day. 

The District Traveller is a model of perseverance, and allows his customers no 
rest till they give him orders : this is a standing rule with him. Labor omnia 
vincit improbus. He also makes his principals pay for his coffee, his washing, ad- 
mission to the theatre, and other petty expenses, which he enters under other items 
to his employers' account. Everybody knows this, except the partners themselves. 
They believe or not in their Traveller's sincerity ; but they always pay, without a 
murmur, his account, as made out by himself, — in other words, the expenses of a 
five months' journey instead of three. The District Traveller treats his principals 
as he treats their customers. 

The Traveller on Foot is a very civil fellow, artful, though really frank, and rather 
cunning, though a faithful servant. He is generally a native of Picardy, and rich 
in virtues. Six, seven, or eight francs are given him, according to the season and 
the state of business. He wears a blouse and gaiters, carries a stout cudgel, and, 
with a trifle in his pocket, wherewith to pay for something to drink on the way, he 
sets out as light as a bird, and as happy as a fish in water. He sends his samples 
and his knapsack by the waggon, by way of economy, the result of which is to be 
entered by profits and losses. When he arrives in a town, he washes and shaves, 
and, having brushed his shoes and clothes, he takes his samples under his arm, and 
calls on his customers. The Foot Traveller, universally recognized as an inoffensive 
and quiet visitor, is never refused admittance by a country tradesman. On entering 
a shop, he deposits his hat and his card of samples on the counter ; and, without 
giving the master time to speak, he addresses him with, " Quite well, thank you; 
and how have you been ?" — "Mosieu," answers the shopkeeper with dignity, " your 
most obedient." The Foot Traveller only calls on the petty tradesmen, the dealers 
in everything on a small scale ; and these chandlers are prouder than rich whole- 
sale houses. The Foot Traveller is no stickler for politeness : he plants himself on 
the counter beside his hat, beats time with his iron-tipped heels, speaks of the state 
of the weather, and presently starts a political discussion. Now the shopkeeper's 
face begins to brighten up, — your chandler is a great politician ; and the Foot Tra- 
veller, whose politics are always conformable to those of his customer, takes care to 
let his interlocutor have the best of the argument. A discussion arises on the ex- 
pediency of a measure recently brought before the Chamber, opinions differ, and the 
feelings of both parties become roused ; a neighbour enters, and espouses a side of 
the question, or perhaps varies in his view of the matter from both disputants. The 
point at issue is debated in all its bearings, and much breath is expended, without 
either of the wiseacres convincing his opponents. The Foot Traveller is at first in 
the Opposition ; he speaks warmly, enthusiastically, whether pure French or not he 



THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 285 

is indifferent ; he argues en Mirabeau, he gesticulates, unfolds his arguments at great 
length, and labours like a demoniac ; his voice rises with his enthusiasm, and his 
flow of words seems inexhaustible. Astonished and confounded, his auditors let 
him have it all his own way : his point is gained. The discussion having thus 
reached its height, the cunning Foot Traveller instantly hauls down his colours, and 
gives into the opinion of the shopkeeper, the vanity of the latter being flattered in 
proportion to the warmth of the dispute. The tradesman's self-love is gratified ; 
and such is his good humour with himself, inspired by this homage to his forensic 
powers, that he is unable to refuse the Traveller an order. 

The Traveller on Foot follows up his triumph even with the shopman, who is a 
person of some importance in the establishment of a general dealer in a country 
town. He addresses him as " My dear friend," promises him a situation in Paris, 
offers him a glass of liqueur, and accompanies him to the shooting-gallery ; he in- 
structs him in the use of the boxing-gloves, shows him how to use nature's arms to 
the best advantage, &c. The Foot Traveller obtains, perhaps, more orders than 
either of his brothers of the road. 

The Pedlar, the French Autolycus of the day, is a kind of Alcides in a blue- striped 
blouse. All the Pedlar's arms, both offensive and defensive, consist of a holly stick, 
with a thong of leather attached. He may be recognized by his oil-skin hat-cover, his 
blue velveteen trousers, which reach just above his thighs, the high hob-nailed boots 
that protect his feet and calves, and the traditional oath ever on his lips. Having 
selected a sub-prefecture — sub-prefectures are his sea-ports, his favourite fields for 
the exercise, of his talents — he looks out for a temporary shop. The public-houses 
at which he puts up generally have a room reserved on purpose for Pedlars. Having 
found a room to suit him, the Pedlar unpacks his wares, and ranges them round 
the smoky shelves, on which full daylight never shines. So much the better for 
the Pedlar, whose customers are the less able to detect the bad quality of his goods, 
the rust- spots on his razors, the darn in a piece of lace, or the poor colour of a 
cotton handkerchief. " Admirable ! — superb ! " cries the Pedlar, enraptured with 
the gloom that prevails in this temporary shop ; and the customer will be taken in, 
like a bird on a limed twig. His preliminary arrangements made, the Pedlar beats 
up for buyers : he coaxes, flatters, cajoles, and persuades his customer — taking care 
to attack him on his weak side. In truth, he does not pride himself on the elegance 
of his language, and his rhetorical figures are not the best selected; but his object 
is to sell his wares, and he attains it ; for the sub -prefecture customer prefers exer- 
cising his own judgment to trusting to that of the Traveller. The Pedlar always 
wears the same costume, summer and winter. He eats and drinks with waggoners 
and carriers ; and sleeps in his show-room, with his wife, his wares, and his dog. 
By this he acquires fleas, but he also saves fivepence a night. He works like a 
galley-slave all day among his twopenny customers, and leaves off no richer than 
he began. Formerly, he made a fortune with a bale of woollens on his back ; 
now-a-days he has a spring cart, thrice as much merchandize, and three times 
less profits. 

Does the reader desire to know what becomes of the Commercial Traveller in his 
latter days ? With a few rare exceptions, the Travelling Partner becomes a gouty 



2S6 THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 

capitalist, and the justice of peace of his parish. After having supplied his con- 
nexion with lastings, spirits, or other articles of home produce, he distributes to 
pleaders stamped paper, and reads them lectures and exhortations. He has not 
changed his trade : its form is still the same, while the articles alone are altered. 

The Interested Traveller, having reached his seventieth year, may travel no 
longer ; and is obliged to accept a sinecure in the shape of a seat in the orchestra 
of one of the minor Paris theatres : thus he turns a problematical talent to account, 
which, however, procures him the advantage of an evening employment, access to 
rehearsals, and opportunities to watch green-room adventures. After having been 
interested, he takes an interest in others ; so that his condition can scarcely be said 
to change. 

, The Commission Traveller was born, lives, and dies, or will die, in a diligence. 
For him the condition ought to be irrevocably hereditary ; hence he and his tra- 
velling portmanteau are always on the road, and hence he will no more abandon the 
diligence than the veteran will abandon his sentry-box and his dinner-knife ; hence, 
so long as, like the Wandering Jew, he has five sous in his pocket, and some orders 
in perspective, he will always be happy, contented, without sorrow, and without 
care. The diligence is his country, his family, his friends ; and having received his 
first smile, the diligence will accept the closing account of his last sigh. 

The Traveller on a Roving Commission, having returned to his firm, becomes 
head warehouseman, and eulogises ribbons, Lucifer matches, or mangel-wurzel seed. 
Having succeeded to his employer's business, and industriously traded on his own 
account till he has amassed a fortune of between fifteen and twenty thousand francs 
a year, and reached his fortieth year, he may, at this mature age, retire from 
business, and enter the Chamber as a Deputy ; and, not to abandon his ancient 
calling, there defend the constitutional rights of the people. 

The Pedestrian Traveller is metamorphosed into a shopkeeper of the Rue St. 
Denis, or a manufacturer of wax candles, or cotton night-caps. Neither must he 
be behind his neighbours in the march of civilization. He marries, his children call 
him " Papa," and he possesses a terrier that goes through the extension motions and 
carries a basket between his teeth, like the late illustrious Munito, of happy memory. 

As for the Pedlar, by dint of farthings, halfpence, and sixpences, carefully saved, 
he becomes master of a few thousand francs, which he has sent, from time to time, 
to his native province, — nearly always Auvergne or Limousin ; and his sixtieth 
winter having, as Dorat would say, made him feel the want of repose, he sells his 
spring-cart, horse, and remaining stock, and returns to the midst of the scenes en- 
deared to him by his infancy, rich in the possession of four hundred and fifty francs 
a year, and an acre of vineyard — not to speak of the rheumatic pains laboriously 
acquired during forty years of anxiety and privation. 

Such is the septemvirate of Commercial Travellers, such as it has been, such as 
it is, and such as it will long remain, notwithstanding the vicissitudes of fortune, 
and the animadversions of hard-hearted customers. Formerly, in the good old times, 
when, before crossing the frontiers of a department, it was a rule to make one's 
will, the good qualities of this useful and excellent class of men were so well appre- 
ciated, that country tradesmen were wont every morning to go to the hotel to inquire 



THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 287 

whether a traveller was arrived. Dealers always had their orders prepared a week 
in advance ; they begged and prayed the Traveller to accept them, such as they 
were; they would not have hesitated to kneel to attain their object ; they would not 
stop at offering the Traveller a family dinner, besides paying for his coffee, and the 
standing glass of liqueur ; they would desire their shopmen to be polite, civil, and 
obliging ; their wife, to take her hair out of paper, and put on her smartest cap ; 
their children, to bow and courtesy, and kiss their hands ; their cashier, to accom- 
pany the Traveller to the cafe to take a bottle of beer, and to the play to see one of 
Scribe's vaudevilles ; to the cathedral, to see the painted windows ; to the museum, 
to see — nothing. In a word, the Traveller was the object of attentions of all 
sorts, and of a great display of civility, but at a small cost, as the Traveller used to 
pay all his expenses. But all this has passed away at the present day : the roles 
are changed. Stars, men, and Commercial Travellers have undergone strange 
revolutions : stars are overthrown, men are still struggling to overthrow one 
another, and Commercial Travellers have preceded them, are following them, and 
will follow them to the last gasp in this general confusion. 

Time was when country dealers knew Paris, Rheims, and Amiens, by name only. 
Commercial Travellers, those canals of French industry, spread all over the kingdom 
the heterogeneous contents of their sample-bags, like bonbons from a cornucopia 
over a confectioner's shop-door ; and the countryman, on seeing all these wonders 
of human ingenuity, presided over his dear counter with becoming pride. Any 
toy of Parisian manufacture was then looked upon as something very foreign, 
and esteemed accordingly ; and this veneration was reflected on the Commercial 
Traveller, the fortunate and honoured dispensator of the most marvellous produc- 
tions of modern industry. But now — tempora ! mores ! — now that Satan has 
prompted the diabolical invention or discovery, which enables the most timid native 
of Brives or Avallon to transport himself to Paris in less time than is required to 
open the eyes, shut them, take a pinch of snuff, and close one's mull, no country 
dealer thinks of depriving himself of a visit to the metropolis. The chandler alone, 
the man of half-ounces and half-yards, of twopences and groats, the general retail 
dealer on a very small scale, still retains the antiquated dread of Paris, its noise, its 
crowd, its bustle ; and, above all, the expenses incurred to live not nearly so well as 
at Laval or Bar-le-Duc, with his pot-au-feu, his jelly, or his rice chicken ; and 
hence, in his Gothic quietism, the obscure country general dealer is the last hope of 
the poor Traveller. What, indeed, would become of the latter, without his little order 
of one hundred and fifty, two hundred, and sometimes even three hundred francs ? 

Such is the result of civilization and the social progress. Civilization has swept 
away the humble shopkeeper, and in his place has arisen the aspiring merchant; our 
social progress has multiplied diligences, which, conjointly with low fares, have 
conspired against the Commercial Traveller. Civilization has robbed us of the 
obsequious tradesman, and from his ashes has sprung to light the difficult and inde- 
pendent customer ; the last ten years have introduced railways, which will give a 
final blow to diligences ; and, thanks to Green and Margot, will eventually give way 
for aerial travelling in balloons ; and so on, until perfection, giving impossibility the 
lie, will reach the highest point, and cause its own destruction. 



288 



THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 



From this it has resulted that, at the present day, those Commercial Travellers 
who have escaped shipwreck, become the martyrs, the drudges, the expiatory victims 
of their employers' insatiable cravings ; from this has it resulted that Commercial 
Travellers have become the begging servants, and the repulsed, scorned, and abashed 
collectors of the house they represent, or strive to represent. Go, sorry wretch, 
go ! and, for the sum of twelve francs a day, including board and lodging en dili- 
gence, go prostitute your character, go sell your conscience, go measure the sin- 
cerity of your protestations on the quality of your sugars, and the fast colour of 
your stuffs. Run from door to door, begging a smile of one, a shake of the hand 

from another, an order from every one, and obtaining nothing. Run, you who 

have neither faith nor law, neither religion nor principles. — No; for what faith may 
guide you, what law may you obey, what principles may you profess, and by what 
religion may you be inspired ? You have nothing, — nothing belongs to you : you 
are not allowed to have even an opinion. All must come to you from your cus- 
tomers, — faith, law, principles, and religion. Cameleon that you are, you settle on 
your employers' connexion, you reflect its colours, you copy its language, you imi- 
tate its manners, you tread, step by step, in its wake, you are wholly and solely its 
slave ; your employers' customers are your divinities, your idols, your good genius, 
your hope, your north- star, and your support ; they are your desolation, your good 
angel, and your sheet-anchor. All hail, then, to your employers' all-powerful 
customers ! May they not be ungrateful for your servile devotion to their sacred 
selves ; may they recompense you for your attention to their wants and wishes ; 
and, by extensive orders, pour the balm of confidence into the wounds they have so 
often inflicted on your vanity and your peace. 





THE PUPIL OF THE ACADEMY.* 



BY L. COUAILHAC. 




w OMETIMES, no doubt, you have been loitering, by- 
ten o'clock in the morning, about the Faubourg 
Poissonniere (it might happen to the most fastidious), 
and you have invariably fallen in, between the Rues 
Richer and de l'Echiquier, with a battalion of young 
girls belonging to the trotting gentry described by 
La Fontaine, all of them — the elbows in their sides, 
the head upright — hurrying along, and carrying a 
Solffye de Rodolphe, or an odd volume of the Reper- 
tory- of the Comedie Frangaise, and walking towards a plain building opening near 
the corner of the Rue Bergere. 

You have been perhaps wondering who these young girls could be ; yet, if you 
had been an observer by taste, or, what is less pleasant, by profession, and if you 
had attentively watched them, you would have m6st probably discovered some out- 
ward mark indicative of their social position. 

Come, let us take our stand for a short time on the pavement opposite to the 
modest building, and study them together. 

* The Conservatoire in France corresponds, in many respects, to the Royal Academy ; but the 
instruction is there more extensive, and embraces more branches of the arts. 



290 



THE PUPIL OF THE ACADEMY. 



Did you suppose they were grisettes ? — No : all the grisettes have been at work 
since eight o'clock. Neither can they belong to the rich and fashionable classes 
of society. Young girls of that station of life have not left their bed, and the time 
is hardly come when they prepare themselves to receive their grammar- master. — 
Look carefully how they are dressed. Their costume, we must confess, might 
puzzle the most ingenious conjecturer. You see not the black silk apron, the 
smart cap, the neat and tidy gown of the grisette; the materials of their dress 
are silk or velvet, and they wear a leghorn bonnet. But the silk is faded, the 
velvet shows its thread, the leghorn bonnet has been evidently very long in service ! 
Poverty shows itself throughout : and why cannot a simple plaid shawl and a 
printed cotton dress suffice to that poverty ? Wherefore all this unsuccessful 
struggle to affect the appearance of better fortune ? 

Do you give it up ? I will, in a word, explain at once all the mystery. 

These young girls are Pupils of the Academy, and take their daily lesson in the 
lyrico- dramatic establishment that you see before you. 

You understand now ; you understand that matinal walk ; you know what mean 
these " solfeges," and these books ; you can account for that peculiar dress, showing 
a strange mixture of indigence, affected finery, and bad taste. Almost all these 
young girls belong to families who have not a decided station in society : retired 
actors, painters, musicians, composers, sculptors, and the like indifferent artists, who 
on the stage, or bow or chisel in hand, have shown just talent enough to get their 
living, but not to acquire a name and an independence. Parents of this class, who, 
often, in their professional career, have lived side by side with eminent artists and mixed 
with superior society, are proud as upstarts, and will not be satisfied to resume their 
place in the sphere of life where they were born. They would be ashamed to see 
their daughters honestly engaged in any manual employment ; they must be artists. 
Notaries, chemists, sheriff's officers, huissiers, transmit their business or their office 
to their children, and in the like manner our theatres must endure the infliction of 
hereditary mediocrities. 

It would be a task much above our descriptive powers to enumerate that multi- 
farious army of young females, to class its varieties, to mark out its striking 
individualities, and to sketch its leading characteristics. We shall only endeavour 
to portray some prominent features. We are limited by our worthy publisher to a 
very few pages ; and our pencil lacks experience and vigour. 

Attend to me, gentle reader. 

Yonder young lady, of stately carriage and Roman majesty, who is approaching, 
followed at a short distance by her mother, calls herself Herminie Soufnot. From 
her infancy she affected great airs, and treated everybody around her most disdain- 
fully ; — hence she was proclaimed in her teens an eminent tragedian, and destined 
to the stage. At fifteen she was admitted to the " Conservatory," and exchanged 
her somewhat vulgar name of Jeannette for the more dramatic one of Herminie. 
Herminie exults already in her expectations of future glory. She looks down on 
our poor world with great contempt, and seems to commune exclusively with heroes 
and princesses of the ancient Melpomene. Her father, the German fluteplayer, and 
her mother, late shopkeeper in the Passage des Panoramas, now boxkeeper at the 



THE PUPIL OF THE ACADEMY. 291 

Opera Comique, are lost in admiration before her. They bow, as if they 
were sovereign commands, to the least decisions of Herminie ; with a single 
frown she makes the whole family tremble. Her father, the fluteplayer, is 
accustomed to say, when playing at dominoes in the evening at the Cafe Minerve, 
'* Neighbour Alignot, you heard Herminie this morning, eh ? How wonderfully she 
declaimed her monologue ! What an eye, and what a Roman nose ! It is a great 
pity that she did not live in the time of that joker Racine ; he would not have cared 
much for Champmesle !" 

Herminie is always under some strong pre- occupation ; she affects to be intensely 
absorbed by the art. She is told that the dinner is on the table, and she answers, 
with the air of a tragedy queen, — 

Seigneur, dans cet aveu depouille d'artifice, 

J'aime a voir que du moins vous vous rendiez justice. 

" Herminie, it is now two o'clock, will you have a walk in the Tuileries with 
your cousin Fibochon ?" 

Herminie places her hand upon her heart, raises the other to heaven, and cries, — 

Oui, vous l'aimez, perfide ! 
Et ces memes fureurs que vous me depeignez, 
Ces bras que dans le sang vous avez vus baignes, 
Ces morts, cette Lesbos, ces cendres, cette flamme, 
Sont les traits dont l'amour l'a grave" dans votre ame. 

" She is mad," says cousin Fibochon. 

" No, cousin," replies mother Soufflot, " don't you see that she is in the enthu- 
siasm of aspiration. 

Herminie is courted by several attorney's clerks, and as many draper's assistants, 
whom' she keeps at a distance. Amongst these aspirant Lovelaces, she at last dis- 
tinguishes one. He deserved her preference by his dark and thick hair, recalling to 
her mind that of the valiant Achilles. She allows him to appear occasionally on her 
passage, and to pick up her nosegay or her fan when she happens to drop them, but 
nothing beyond that. The tragic muse is a severe and proud virgin, who disdains 
the homage of simple mortals. 

Herminie goes to evening parties in her neighbourhood. She is treated with 
great respect by the family of the hosier living at the corner of the street, and by that 
of the bill-broker, who occupies the first floor in her house. The theatre has so 
much attraction for the good folks of Paris ! It is certainly not in Paris that 
comedians could now complain of any prejudice against them. It is enough to be 
connected with the green-room, in one way or another, to be invited, welcomed, 
courted. Even the prompter, the scene-shifters, and the hair-dressers attached 
to each theatre, have their share of public favour. They are treated with great 
kindness in the Faubourg St. Denis and the Rue du Temple. Everybody ex- 
pects some interesting details upon the gentlemen and ladies of the theatre. At 
what hour does M. Francisque go to bed ? What time does Mdlle. Theodorine 
require to put on her beautiful costume in the melo-drama of the " Manoir de Mont- 
louvier ?" And M. St. Ernest, does he eat like anybody else ? Is it true that, 



292 THE PUPIL OF THE ACADEMY. 

between the acts, Mdlle. George takes sorbets and ices, presented to her by three 
negro servants in grand livery ? 

It is easy to judge the wonderful sensation made by Mdlle. Herminie in these 
assemblies. When she condescends to read some verses, all mouths are wide open; 
the end of each passage is received with rounds of applause, and if the children are 
frightened and cry, they are immediately sent to bed without mercy; but when Mdle. 
Herminie is kind enough to play a scene from Bajazet, or Esther, all games are 
stopped, the most interesting conversations cease instantly, and the little dogs are 
called to the laps of the grandmammas for fear they should take a fancy to a bit of 
play with the cat of the house. Then the little drawing-room is divided into two 
parts ; the one represents the stage, the other is left to the audience ; the foot- 
lights are formed by a row of chairs, upon which tallow candles are placed. Herminie 
wraps herself in her French shawl, and her regular interlocutor, M. Michonneau, 
adjusts the hair of his fair wig. 

M. Michonneau is an old clerk of the treasury, who has passed half of his 
life at the orchestra of the Comedie Francaise. He has always been extremely 
partial to the theatrical art, and it is to him a matter of great regret not to 
have been able, during his long career, to be introduced to one single play- 
actor. But he was obliged to attend to his office every day, from eight o'clock in 
the morning till five ; then came the dinner ; and in the evening the gentleman 
and the ladies of the Comedie Francaise went on the stage. Thus there was no 
means in the week of seeing them. On Sundays, M. Michonneau was free ; but he 
had an extraordinary predilection for fishing, and he used to spend all his holydays 
in throwing his hook into the Marne, between St. Maur and Petit Brie. Observe 
now how M. Michonneau, arrived at the last period of his life, is proud of taking his 
part in theatrical amusements, of giving the cue to a young actress who is the 
hope of the French drama, and will be some day its glory. (Style of the profes- 
sors of declamation at the Conservatory.) 

Hush ! Herminie is ready ; she is in a convulsive agitation, like the Pythoness on 
her tripod. M. Michonneau advances with a timid step, and stands by her side ; 
he will play Antiochus to the new Berenice. He is offered the book ; but he answers 
with dignity, that he knows all the repertory by heart. 

The greatest silence prevails. The master of the house himself, accustomed to 
snooze in a corner when his guests are playing all sorts of games, suspends his 
troublesome noise. Michonneau strikes the floor three times with his heels, and 
the performance begins. 

Antiochus (Michonneau) has scarcely pronounced a few words, when his memory 
fails him ; his hand moves slowly along the seam of his trousers, he scratches his 
forehead, and, after a considerable effort, he resumes his speech, but to lose it again. 
A general murmur, hardly repressed, is heard among the audience. Herminie 
stands like a victim ; the mistress of the house takes pity upon the poor amateur, 
and brings him the book and a light. Michonneau, in a desperate fit, seizes the 
candle in one hand, the book in the other, and soon afterwards a shrill scream is 
heard in the room, immediately followed by many piercing shrieks. Michonneau, 
entirely pre- occupied by his part, has just carried the light near his temples, and set 



THE PUPIL OF THE ACADEMY. 293 

on fire the curls of his fair wig. The conflagration has been rapid ; but Madame 
Michonneau rushes on the stage, and wraps her husband's head in the skirt of her 
gown. A general desolation, tempered by some hilarity, pervades the audience. At 
last the dangerous trial is over : Michonneau is quite safe ; his wig only has dis- 
appeared in the struggle. 

It is impossible now to resume Berenice with the bare skull of Michonneau : it is 
given up. The audience, pacified by the misfortunes of Antiochus, console him 
with three rounds of applause, and begin again to play at various games. Herminie 
goes to pout in a corner ; she cannot forgive Michonneau for having spoiled her 
hits, and promises to herself never again to throw away the treasures of her tragic 
muse before vulgar people, incapable of appreciating them (which does not prevent 
her from beginning again at the first opportunity.) The exuberantly-haired young 
clerk, whom she has distinguished among the aspirants to her hand, and who 
contrives to be invited to all parties where she goes, approaches her, and pays 
her the most flattering compliments ; she calls him a silly fellow, and asks for her 
clogs. 

At the Conservatory, Herminie is a great favourite with her professor. He re- 
peats constantly, that she has the carriage of a queen, and he points her out as a 
model to her school-fellows. 

We may easily foretel Herminie's fortune. Her professor, who plays some subor- 
dinate characters at the " Comedie Francaise," will obtain permission for her 
to appear on the stage of the " Rue de Richelieu." One Sunday she will play 
before a few friends, some relations, a numerous troop of hired claqueurs, and an 
audience having brought six pounds to the treasury. She will be much applauded, 
but she will have no engagement ; and the manager will be quite right to decline 
her services ; for Herminie is one of those precocious wonders who have neither 
heart nor passion, nor real enthusiasm ; who know how to raise, at a given time, the 
right or the left arm; — well-regulated machines, but not admired by people of 
taste. 

Herminie, disappointed in her high expectations, will complain of course of the 
wretched taste of the public ; she will accuse the most eminent actresses of the 
" Comedie Francaise" of having intrigued against her ; and she will go as far as to 
question the integrity or the chastity of the manager, the royal commissioner,* and 
the leading members of the company. She will in such a manner console herself 
for the defeat of her hopes ; and, preparing herself for better chances, appeal from 
the Parisian audience to the spectators of the suburbs. In company with two or 
three other strolling players, without any fixed engagement, and with some ama- 
teurs sprung up from carpenters' and jewellers' shops, and who will have obtained a 
few days' leave — novice Britannicuses, Agamemnons and Pyrrhuses in embryo — 
she will travel triumphantly over the little towns that surround Paris. She will play 
Hermione at St. Germain, Iphigenie at Pontoise, Junie at Meaux, Roxane at 
St. Denis ; and here is a specimen of her play-bills : — 

* The Theatre Francais is under the superintendence of a Royal Commissioner. 



294 



THE PUPIL OF THE ACADEMY. 



THEATRE OF SAINT GERMAIN EN LA YE, 

With the permission of the Mayor, and other civil and military authorities, 

The company of the Children of Melpomene will have the honour to present this evening 
an extraordinary spectacle. 

(FOR THE FIRST TIME AT THIS THEATRE.) 

ITHRIDATE; 



THE AGED KING AND HIS TWO SONS : 

A Tragedy in Five Acts, by the late M. Racine, 
of the French Academy. 

Mademoiselle HERMINIE SOUFFLOT, PUPIL OF THE ROYAL 
CONSERVATORY, to whom was awarded the First Prize of Professor 
M * * *'s Class, and of the " Come'die Frangaise" will perform the character of 
Monime. 

To be followed (also for the First Time) by 

LES PLAIDEURS; 






THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE OF LITIGATION: 

A Comedy, in Three Acts, by the aforesaid late M. Racine. 
M. Narcisse, of the Theatre of Carpentras, will perform the character of Dandin. 

The following Interludes in the course of the evening. 

Between the first and second acts of the Tragedy, Mademoiselle Herminie Soufflot will sing 
Man p' tit Pierre and la Folle de Grisar. 

Between the fourth and fifth acts of the Tragedy, Mademoiselle Herminie Soufflot will dance 
the Cachucha. 

Between the two pieces, a long-sword combat between Mademoiselle Herminie Soufflot and 
M. Narcisse. 

Between the acts of the Comedy, various scenes of mummery, in which will be given imitations 
of the first artists of the capital. M. Auguste will counterfeit M. Alphonse ; M. Victor, 
Messrs. Charles and Alfred. 

THE PRICES WILL NOT BE RAISED. Children and gentlemen of the 1th Dragoons will 
be admitted at half-price. 



THE PUPIL OF THE ACADEMY. 295 

Will you know what is for poor strolling actors the result of such an extraordinary- 
performance ? They must give free orders to the mayor and his deputies, to their 
families and their friends, to the members of the municipal body, to the gendarmes, 
the keeper of the borough, to the beadle, the collector of taxes, the clerk of the 
coach- office, the innkeeper and all his servants. Then the account of the tickets 
taken at the door and paid for is soon made up. You may see a few patrons of the 
arts in the boxes on the first tier, and in the lower circle two or three provincial 
geniuses ; five or six dandies, who followed the young actress from Paris, parade 
their yellow gloves in the stage-box, and twenty labourers or fresh-water sailors are in 
the pit. It is hardly sufficient to pay the travelling expenses of the strolling company. 

Herminie, as she is increasing in years and size, will get tired of these rare and 
unprofitable exhibitions before the audience of the suburbs. She now begins to 
think of her fortune and her name. At twenty-five years of age she will introduce 
herself to one of the theatrical agents, brutally nicknamed, by the dramatic gentry, 
dealers in human flesh, and obtain an engagement to perform, at Rouen or Bour- 
deaux, the queens in tragedy, the first characters in modern dramas, and the 
" grandes coquettes" in comedy. As Moliere, Corneille, Racine, and Marivaux, 
are rather out of favour in our beautiful France, and the public of the principal 
towns will have the ballet first and next the opera, and the drama only as an ac- 
cessory, she will play a hundred times " La Tour de Nesle, " La Chambre Ar- 
dente," and all the pieces of M. Anicet Bourgeois. Such a hard task will soon 
wear out her physical power ; she will fall gradually from the resident companies of 
the great towns into the itinerant bands of the small cities ; and, as she will be still 
handsome, and has been always irreproachable in her conduct, she will at last 
marry a recruiting captain at Carcassone, or an exciseman at Clermont en Au- 
vergne. Then, on the front of the new cottage, where she will enjoy her tranquil 
existence, the following words might be written : — 

" Here lies Herminie Soufflot, Pupil of the Academy, &c." 

Make way — make way, — there is Fretillon coming ! Fretillon was a florist ; but 
after having many times seen Dejazet and heard Achard, she took an extraordinary 
fancy for the stage ; was admitted to the Conservatory, through the interest of the 
portress of the establishment — her own aunt. Her pert looks and well-shaped 
ankle succeeded there admirably, and she bid fair to be, some day, 

" Un peu trop forte en gueule et trop impertinente !" 

On her admission, she was immediately classed in the " Tabliers."* She studied 
the characters of Dorine, Madelon, Lisette, Fanchon, all the waiting-maids of 
Marivaux — all the servants of Moliere. She would undoubtedly have made wonderful 
progress in her profession, had it not been for her excessive partiality to rides on 
donkeys at Montmorency, drives in the Bois de Boulogne, in hired cabs, elegant 
dress, and snug pic-nics. 

Her dibut at the " Com^die Franchise" will not be more successful than that of 
Herminie Soufflot. The editor of a newspaper, who, upon the recommendation of 

* The technical term applied in France to the class of characters that answers to our " soubrettes." 



296 THE PUPIL OP THE ACADEMY. 

a friend, takes some interest in her, will say that she gives promises of future talent, 
and that is all. But, be not afraid to lose her : she will not, like Herminie Souf- 
flot, bury herself in a country town. Fretillon to leave Paris ! Fretillon no 
longer to see the Boulevart Montmartre, to sup at the Cafe Anglais, to parade her 
dresses in the stage boxes at all the theatres, and her graces and her costly lace at 
the Concerts Musard ! No, no, indeed : Fretillon will stay in Paris. She will turn 
to account her studies at the Conservatory, to play the " amoureuses" at some 
minor theatre ; and she will be long the pride and joy of literary and fashionable 
lions. 

What is that group whence come flourishes, shakes, and roulades ? This is the 
singing- school. All these young ladies dream of a debut at the " Grand Opera," 
and are disturbed in their sleep by the success of Falcon and Damoreau. How 
many among them will begin by a miserable failure, and be obliged to go to Angers 
or Bayonne to play the part of Dugazon ! — too happy, if, in their misfortune, they 
are not reduced to accept an engagement in those strolling bands, where the prima 
donna sings, in the same evening, the part of Rosina, and declaims the long lamenta- 
tions of the heroine in the new melodrama ! 

Let us now say a few words of the interesting division of pianists. The pianists ! 
Try to count them : they are as numerous as the stars in the firmament. Is there 
one house where a piano, indifferent or bad, might not be found in some corner ? 
Who is the mother who denies herself the pleasure of having the piano taught to 
her daughter ? Where is the young lady, aspiring to the connubial state, who 
cannot tolerably run her fingers over the keys of a piano ? 

At the Conservatory, there is this peculiarity in the division of pianists, that it is 
not exclusively composed of children belonging to those families of dubious stand- 
ing that we have already described, or of those pupils whose precocious talent shows 
at once decided avocations ; but it contains also many young ladies of the middle 
class, and whose parents are in easy circumstances. This may be easily explained. 
The citizen who has now-a-days a matter-of-fact propensity for calculation, says to 
himself, " I pay fifteen or twenty pounds per annum taxes ; it is out of the taxes 
that government provides for all the expenses of the Conservatory, where the best 
masters are engaged, and the most perfect methods of teaching are adopted ; there- 
fore, I have an undoubted right to send my daughter Lily to the Conservatory, to 
learn the piano, that my wife and myself are so fond of. It will, besides, save the 
expense of a master at home, and, in fact, reduce so far the amount of my taxes." 

Is it not a deep calculation ? The citizen, who is juryman, elector, captain in 
the National Guard, and much respected in his parish, will easily obtain his daugh- 
ter's admission to the Royal School ; and, consequently, when you go perchance in 
the evening to your grocer's, to buy a lucifer-box, your are sure to hear in the back- 
parlour the romance of " Guido" played on the piano. 

The pianists of the Academy are the pride of their parents, the joy of the family 
parties, the attraction of the concerts at two shillings the ticket, and the plague of 
the unfortunate neighbours who live in the same house. 

We should be guilty of serious offence, if we were to omit the sketch of the 
harpist. At the Conservatory, she is alone in her class ; and when, at the distribu- 







THE DANCINO-SCHOOL. 



THE PUPIL OF THE ACADEMY. 297 

tion of prizes, the Secretary of State recommends to the young pupils a noble 
emulation, she has no occasion to follow the advice. A new harpist succeeds every 
ten years to the harpist who retires ; but two harpists were never known to be 
together at the Conservatory; and, as perfection is very difficult to attain, and 
requires a long practice, it happens that the harpist, who was in the flower of her 
youth when she entered the Royal School, is often grey-haired when she leaves it, 
and has thus devoted her existence to an ill-fated instrument, in which she is hardly 
proficient. However, she has a capital resource for her old age : as the harp requires 
graceful attitudes, her practice enables her to get her living by sitting to the 
painters in their studios. The harpists are admirable types for a Corinne at Cape 
Misenum. 

The harpist's name is Eloa : she wears a white dress, a blue sash with long 
ends, and curled hair. Her soul is as pure as the azure of the purest sky ; her eye 
wanders about uncertain; inspiration resides in her large and radiant forehead. 
She is always in the clouds, above the realities of this world ; her only worldly 
weakness is her passion for the cakes sold at the corner shop, near the Gymnase. 

It would be indeed a difficult task to explain why the superintendents of the 
dramatic art, in France, have thought fit in their wisdom to separate the dancing- 
school from the school of declamation and the singing- school. The dancing- school 
and its various classes are an appendage of the " Academie Royale de Musique," 
and placed under the immediate jurisdiction of M. Duponchel, the manager of the 
Grand Opera. We cannot help thinking, that there is not much propriety in 
throwing young girls from their childhood into the unwholesome agitation of the 
green-room ; but it would be out of place to assume here the stern language of a 
moralist : we shall confine ourselves to remarking, that the progress, as well as the 
harmony, of the three branches of the scenic instruction, would certainly be im- 
proved by their being united in the same establishment, under the same direction. 

It is our pleasure to unite what has been separated by our rulers ; and to com- 
plete this sketch, we shall make an attempt at the rapid picture of the young pupils 
of the dancing-school. Here we have quite different physiognomies, and quite a 
new people. 

Have you never heard of that colony of young and pretty women who form the 
population of a certain part of the Chaussee d'Antin ? One fine summer evening, 
in the Rues Notre Dame de Lorette, de Breda, de Navarin, and in the various other 
streets that industrious speculators have just built, as by enchantment, on the 
height of St. George, all the windows are mysteriously open, and successively 
occupied by many pretty faces, many smiling lips, many delightful figures, and 
many beautiful eyes — blue, dark, hazel : long ringlets are softly moved by the un- 
dulations of the wind, and tiny white hands are shown to the best advantage, 
relieved by the grey colour of half-open Venetian blinds. At first sight, it would 
not require strong imaginative powers to fancy that you have caught an unexpected 
view of Mahomet's paradise. 

Of these beauties, some are choristers of minor theatres, others are dancers at 
the Grand Opera, some grisettes employed by the most fashionable milliners, and 
the rest ladies of leisure. None of them have money in the funds, yet they dine at 

Q Q 



298 THE PUPIL OF THE ACADEMY. 

Very's, sup at the Cafe* Anglais, never walk in the streets, are dressed in the best 
style, and enjoy all the luxuries of life. 

And whence come these amiable ladies, as they style themselves ? Few are 
offspring of the working-classes of Paris ; many owe their existence to the country. 
When, at Strasbourg or Bayonne, a young and pretty girl has listened with too 
much confidence to some provincial Lovelace, or to a handsome officer garrisoned in 
the place, as soon as she begins to fear the inquisitive eye of her kind neighbours, 
she quietly takes a place in the diligence, and goes to hide herself in Paris, that 
great populous desert. There her education is soon completed, and presently she 
shines among the fashionable lions. And the child ? Why, as long as the offspring 
of her first error is in its tenderest youth, the mother keeps it shut up in some 
boarding-school in the neighbourhood, and goes occasionally to give it some kisses, 
mingled with tears. But years elapse — the child grows. If it is a boy, he flies 
early away without leave, and becomes non-commissioned officer in the Lancers, 
strolling actor, commercial traveller for some spirit merchant, or perhaps first 
dentist of his majesty the emperor of China, for the benefit of decayed teeth in the 
departments of La Creuse and du Loiret. He very seldom troubles his respectable 
mother with his letters, except perhaps to beg, in the name of her maternal love, 
some current coin of the realm. The mother feels no regret for the absence of her 
prodigal son, and she never mentions him to her acquaintances of both sexes. 

But if she have a daughter, then it is quite a different thing. She is not jealous 
of her, as certain mothers among the " bourgeoises" used to be. No : she has 
loved and beloved quite enough to appreciate, to their just value, passion, pleasures, 
and men. She has nothing to fear; she feels no envy on that score. It is of a 
brilliant life that she dreams at present. After her life of luxury and enjoyments, 
she is afraid of nothing more than poverty ; she has been unable to make her for- 
tune, and she wants her daughter, her dear Corinne, to make one. Patronized by 
her mother's friends among the diplomatic body, Corinne is admitted to the 
dancing-school of the " Academie Royale de Musique." There she finds all the 
daughters of her mother's friends — Neala de St. Remy, Lisida de Barville, Antonia 
de St. Amaranthe, Maria de Bligny, Fenella de St. Victor, &c. There she learns 
the Cachuca, and all the science of love. Her mother follows her progress with an 
anxious admiration; she praises everywhere the precocious development of her forms, 
the perfection of her pirouettes, her fair complexion and her graceful ankles, the 
beauty of her features and the poetry of her dance. To obtain permission for her 
debut, she is unremitting in her attentions to all the powers of the Opera, from the 
porter up to the ballet-master. At last, the great day is at hand. Corinne has 
entered her fifteenth year, and is to make her first appearance by a pas de trois in a 
favourite ballet. All the little fairies of the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette, all the 
dandies of the jockey-club, hasten to the Opera. The gracefulness and the 
pirouettes of Corinne have a wonderful success. The fashion adopts the new star 
as it rises in the horizon. Fifteen days after, Corinne may be seen driven in an 
elegant equipage, with her protector, her mother, and her mother's lover. 

But all the pupils of the dancing school are not as lucky as Corinne. Many of 
them are left unheeded among the cloisters, and reduced to play for ever subordinate 



THE PUPIL OF THE ACADEMY. 299 

Sylphides. It is almost invariably the consequence of a first inclination ill directed. 
They have been weak enough to fall in love with law-students whom they met at the 
Ranelagh, or German musicians, who threatened to make away with themselves. 
To raise these fallen angels, it requires no less than an influential journalist or a 
cosmopolite banker. 

The dancing-master's physiognomy, at the " Academie Royale de Musique," is 
rather a curious one. When a dancer, after thirty years of loyal services, has lost his 
elasticity, and cannot any longer spring from the ground — when he is tired, worn out } 
foundered, he becomes a professor. The dancing- school is to him what Greenwich 
hospital is to disabled sailors. He writes on his cards, " Polydore Larchet, late first 
dancer at the ' Academie Royale de Musique/ dancing- master at the Academie 
Royale de Musique." 

Polydore Larchet is a little man, who walks with his head upright, his foot bent, 
and his arms gracefully bowed. He wears a fair wig, a light-blue dress coat, yellow 
inexpressibles quite tight, and thin shoes at all seasons. He is a faithful adherent 
to the classical style of dancing, and makes, but with reluctance, some concessions 
to new methods. He will, on all occasions, remind you that he has had the honour 
of dancing at Erfurth before their majesties the Emperors Alexander and Napoleon, 
and that the great ladies of the day were delighted with his personation of the river 
Scamander. He takes off his hat when the name of Vestris is pronounced in his 
presence, and maintains that Louis XIV. was the greatest king we ever had, 
because he was the most elegant dancer of his time. 

But you should see M. Polydore Larchet in his school : his cold dignity is 
admirable ; he never gets impatient, and always uses the most select expressions. 
When he addresses his pupils, even the youngest, he invariably employs the most 
polite forms. " Mdlle. Julia, will you be so good as to turn out your toes. Mdlle. 
Amanda, do have the kindness to raise a little more your left arm." Polydore is the 
last representative of French gallantry. 

But nobody wants dancers ; they are proscribed in the name of taste, and, ere 
long, the art will be cultivated only by the fairer half of the world. The dancing- 
master at the Academie Royale de Musique will presently disappear from the 
collection of national caricatures. It was, indeed, quite time to draw his picture. 

Now, if you want to know how many first-rate artists come out every year from 
the Conservatory, let us go successively to all the theatres of Paris : Rachel, Duprez, 
Frederick Lemaitre, are not pupils of the Conservatory. We only mention the fact, 
and will not run the risk of lulling you asleep by a discussion which, for us, would 
be productive of only painful recollections. 




THE ARTISTS' FRIEND. 



BY FRANCIS WEY. 




y UITE a model for indolence was our friend Badoulot, 
when we were schoolboys together at the College of 
Poligny. The masters, however, never punished him; 
for he knew how to render them a host of little 
services, such as fetching their pocket-handkerchief 
or their snuff-box, or putting wood into the stove, 
or opening their books in the proper place, when the 
classes came up for lessons. He was always behind 
the others, as well in the play- ground as in the 
school-room ; but he chattered well upon every 
subject, although he could put nothing into practice. 

The two Aleves invested with the dignity of chorister-boys for the College Chapel, 
were objects of his especial attention ; and, when dressed in the gown and surplice, 
were never suffered to be out of his sight. If a regiment passed through the town, 
none so curious as he to see it march by ; but the gay show produced upon him an 
effect perfectly different to that which it produced on us. A battalion of the Guards, 
which filed down the College street one Thursday, brought about a revolution in 
our tastes and amusements which lasted for several weeks. The whole aspect of 
the establishment was changed ; and the new order of things might be traced upon 



THE artists' friend. 301 

the very walls, where cross-hilted sabres, and moustachioed warriors, chalked in 
different directions, replaced the fat-faced abbe's, with their conical caps, which we 
used to sketch there, looking like so many pumpkins, each surmounted by a dice-box. 
Sometimes even a timid hand would venture, with seditious crayon, to make a rough 
draught of the form of the "Usurper's" hat. There was a considerable consump- 
tion of paper at that time, for the construction of cocked hats ; and a whole forest of 
broomsticks was put in requisition for the fabrication of sabres. One great division 
formed itself into regiments, and nominated its captains and its general, until, at 
last, the spirit of imitation had transformed the whole school into a barrack. 
Badoulot, however, never enrolled himself, or at most, attached himself only to the 
suite. Although he looked upon the schoolboy troops with as much curiosity as 
those of King Louis, he had no desire to form one of them. He soon, however, 
made up to " the General," talked with him upon military tactics, and became his 
inseparable companion, — almost his slave. Upon such matters, as w T ell as about 
everything else, he had always plenty to discourse ; but in putting his theories into 
practice, his talents dwindled away, and his intentions fell powerless. He was fond 
of reading ; but he read without method, arrangement, or discernment, so that his 
mind was tricked out like a Harlequin's jacket. 

During the three years we passed under the drawing-master, Badoulot never 
made the smallest progress. He commenced a hundred different subjects, and never 
terminated one. Not a nose of Raphael's, David's, or Gerard's, but passed through 
his hands ; but he went no further. The rest of his time was employed in giving 
his advice to the first boy in the class, who had got to draw from busts, to cut his 
pencils for him, and knead him little bullets for rubbing out. Badoulot' s merit was 
one of a very singular description. In any argument about art, he unhorsed the 
very cleverest ; and the master himself grew pale before his force of reasoning. In 
fact, so much knowledge, such a profusion of ideas, such perfect notions upon every 
subject, did our fellow-pupil display, that it was the general saying, " Oh, Badoulot 

is an idle fellow; but if he chose ;" and Badoulot used to say to himself, 

" Oh, if I chose ." But, alas ! he never did choose. 

The efforts made to inspire him with emulation were incredible, but it was labour 
lost. Our young friend, with all his admiration for what was beautiful, and for 
those who knew how to execute it, had no desire to imitate them himself. He dis- 
played the liveliest sympathy without the slightest vocation. He contrived, how- 
ever, to finish his College studies ; and, at that period, knew the names of more 
illustrious authors and celebrated painters than all of us put together. He was 
acquainted, also, with the titles and forms of a multitude of books, and talked im- 
mensely, and with much vehemence. 

We tenderly bid each other adieu, at the College gates, before crossing the 
threshold of life. More than a year went by ; and, as I passed through Dijon, the 
native town of my former schoolfellow, I again met Badoulot. He explained to me 
the indigestible nature of the provincial atmosphere ; declared that he was suffo- 
cating within the city walls for want of air (we were standing in the great square) ; 
expounded that the whole place was exclusively embellished with idiots, without 
even excepting his worthy father ; and protested that he expected, before long, to 



302 



THE ARTISTS FRIEND. 



die. I pronounced the word " Paris,", and the big tears started into his eyes. He 
confessed to me that he only awaited the hour when he should come of age to give 
himself an attitude in the world. " Nous autres! " he exclaimed, " spirits like ours 
require independence." His nous autres alarmed me: this hint at " kindred spirits" 
gave me the idea that my friend Badoulot had involved himself in some masonic 
society, of mysterious as well as culinary design. His nous autres reminded me, at 
the same time, of the exclusive " we" of the parvenu affecting airs of nobility, to 
whom the Marquis de Crequi replied, " What I think most singular in you is your 
plural." 

We were still engaged together in " melancholy but energetic conversation," 
when all on a sudden I saw him assume an expression of respect, mingled with 
admiration. He lowered his voice, pressed my arm, and, with a confidential wink, 
directed my attention to a passer-by. 

A long, queer-looking devil it was, encased in a loose gingerbread-coloured 
great-coat, with a rusty brown velvet collar ; and 
with a pair of boots on his feet, most tragically 
cracked in sundry places. A pair of gloomy-looking 
eyes rolled beneath the undulating brim of a nap- 
less white hat, whilst the hollow notes of a doleful 
air wound their way out of his throat, through the 
quill of a toothpick, which he was champing be- 
tween his teeth. 

" Look there," said Badoulot, with an air of reve- 
rential humility, " that's Monsieur Saint Eugene, 
the first bass- singer of our theatre, an astonish- 
ing man, whose merits failed to be appreciated at 
Paris, at Quimper, at Romorantin, at Montargis, 
at Epinal, and at Pezenas. He will give you the 
full contre-ut after dinner, and the si-flat fasting." 
With that he pulled off his hat, and bowed to the 
ground; but as the famous "bass" gave no signs of recognition, and my old 
schoolfellow had been boasting of his intimate acquaintance, he hastily explained 
that " Saint Eugene was very short-sighted." He blushed, however, up to the 
eyes ; and, as we continued our walk, he gave me some very minute details about 
the "lives and adventures" of several members of the Dijon troop, — leading me, 
all the while, as if unintentionally, down a little lane, by which, judging by the 
direction taken by his friend " the bass," I had reason to conjecture that my com- 
panion hoped to cut across the actor's path, in order to see him pass once more. 
" Well," he exclaimed, on taking leave of me in the yard of the diligence-office, 

" you will be there the first ; but in a few months of age and then they 

shall see what I can do." 

I still fancied that he had some evil design in his head ; and replied, " Jean, my 
good fellow, be cautious. What is it that you mean to do ?" 

" I know not," exclaimed he, " but time will show. I have that there," he con- 
tinued, giving himself an enormous blow of the fist upon his forehead, that sounded 




THE ARTISTS 7 FRIEXD. 



303 



like an empty barrel, " which consumes me. Forth it must. What it is I cannot 
tell, but the world -will know when my head brings forth." 

I wished him " a good deliverance ;" and, congratulating myself upon having a 
schoolfellow who promised so enormously, I departed for the capital, where I passed 
six years, without hearing even the name of my friend Jean. At the conclusion of 
this lapse of time, my porter gave me, on coming home one day, a visiting card, 
upon which, in superb Gothic letters, were these two no less Gothic names, — 
SkijanS 23asfcottIot. 

I needed no further demonstration that our friend had become a Genius, and that 
very evening hastened to call upon him. He was not at home ; and I followed him 
to the house of Baron , our mutual friend. 

In the midst of ten or a dozen celebrities of the day, more or less celebrated, I 
found my friend Badoulot lying in a vast arm-chair, d, la Henri II., his legs elevated 
above his head, and his arms hanging down 
on either side, talking, discussing, replying, 
arguing, explaining, preaching, and professing, 
with the tone of a 'pasha, and a nonchalance 
and abundance perfectly astonishing. The con- 
versation turned on the arts, on music, and 
poetry, all hashed up together. Three poets, 
and as many well-known composers, were 
there, listening, with extraordinary deference, 
to Badoulot, who beat them all hollow in argu- 
ment. It would have been impossible to treat 
a question of art better ; and all these great 
practitioners were pigmies by his side. An 
unexperienced spectator would have taken him 
merely for a "carpet" critic; but from the 
energy which inspired him, the wild look of 
his eyes, the dishevelled nature of his discourse, his head of hair, and the per- 
spiration which trickled down his peaked beard on to his waistcoat a la Barnave, 
and his black velvet coat, of a cut perfectly fabulous, one might have easily recog- 
nized an artist ; and, what is more, a great artist ! 

As soon as he perceived me, he shook me violently by the hand, shouted me a 
sonorous " ton jour," like a man rejoicing in a large expanse of chest and a plenitude 
of force, and then resumed his gargling. The subject before him at the moment 
was statuary, and I had every reason to believe that he was become a great sculptor. 
I changed my opinion, however, as soon as he spoke of poetry ; he laid down the 
law with so much aplomb, that I no longer doubted he had become a poet. But five 
minutes afterwards it was just as easy to see that my friend was no less admirable a 
composer. He was a universal prodigy ! As to the technical " slang" of the trade, 
he was a complete master of it. Figures, counterpoints, canons, were familiar terms 
in his mouth : a blue sky, I heard, was a cobalt ground, tinted with lake ; and in his 
admiration of a bushy foreground, covered with shadow, we were informed how the 
bistres were worked up, and rubbed in, and warmed up, and the brushwood touched 
in, &c. &c. 




304 



THE ARTISTS FRIEND. 












The sole conversation of the evening was of art and artists : the existence of the 
rest of the world was unacknowledged ; and, by the time we took leave, Badoulot 
had shown himself so general in special excellence, that, not being able to divine in 
which of the sciences he was a practitioner, and not daring to address him a question 
upon the subject, which would have revealed a most impertinent ignorance, I left him 
unenlightened. 

A gentleman had accompanied us to the door, who, during the whole evening, 
had not uttered two words of note. This dull personage continued the same route 
with me, and I endeavoured to find fodder in him for my curiosity with respect to 
Badoulot. " Persons of the nature of your friend/' replied my companion, " ought 
properly to be born rich. These men of words, but not of action, of theories with- 
out practice, of high-sounding incapacity, fasten upon your artists like horse-flies 
upon cattle. Gifted with a certain taste for art, but without any real ardent sym- 
pathy, and deprived of all power of fecundity, or ' calling,' as lovers of the arts, 
they form a numerous band of mere shadows, who give back with their lips the 
impressions received by their eyes. But nothing goes beyond. If such people are 
poor, they turn colour-grinders, prompters to a theatre, or figurants at the Opera. 
If they are rich, millionaires, princes, or ministers, they become the judges and 
protectors of art — Colberts upon a small scale — Maecenases in miniature — " pocket" 
Leos the Tenth. If, like your friend, they possess an honourable competency, they 
couple up their uninspired genius with the talent of some practitioner, whom they 
never quit. The arts are their only occupation : the whole world, in their eyes, is 
peopled only with great men, whilst they themselves become great men by frictionary 
contact, as it were, or incubation. These fetishes treat all questions of art to 
admiration — a talent generally excelled in by those who never have done anything, 
and never will do. If you ask what they are ? — they are * Artists' Friends,' or 
rather hangers-on — stockbrokers of talent. They have no other position in 
society. 

" When the { Artists' Friend,' " continued my informant, " finds the weight of 
years upon his back, — and by that time, from always repeating the same thing, he 
has remained far behind the general progress, — his enthusiasm diminishes, the rigour 
of his principles is softened down, his own boldness intimidates him, his wings 
droop featherless, his talons lose their claws, and he melts gradually down into a 
universal fondness. At the mere name of ' art' or ' artist,' he falls about your neck 
and embraces you ; and he sheds tears at the sight of his grandnephew's first ' rose.' 
In a word, when once worn out, and worth nothing more, the Friend of the Arts 
becomes an excellent man in his way, and makes a good cicisbeo for fifty-year-old 
actresses, or an indifferent picture- dealer. If he has any fortune still left, he 
makes himself friends by his kitchen and his wine-cellar. Such, Sir, is your friend's 
destiny, placed in the best possible light. Au revoir, and good night." 

Since that day I have frequently met my friend Badoulot, and followed all his 
transformations with attention, admiring his numerous and individual excellences. 
It is really sad to think to what a frightful extent this error (inwardly produced by 
a series of miscarriages) multiplies itself when once the supremacy of " thought" 
has dethroned all else. 



THE artists' friend. 305 

My friend Badoulot, in fact, has become a being of very multifarious nature ; 
sometimes he turns critic, and esconces himself behind the battery of the news- 
papers, so generally infested by abortive painters or uninspired musicians. These 
literary geniuses of a novel species have adopted a most deplorable slang, and 
created a vocabulary of their own, the basis of which is the horrible word " artistic." 
u . The Artists' Friend" is loquacious and authoritative, and, far from being the satel- 
lite of your celebrated men, he establishes himself as a planet by their side. It is he 
who preaches the doctrines of which these celebrities of their day are only practical 
examples, and it is himself that he admires in their works. In these times of 
general speculation, he is not very disinterested, and manages, without much ado, to 
lay hands upon a collection of pencil and water-colour drawings, sketches, and 
autographs. 

There is not a painter who has not to undergo the obsequious impertinences of my 
friend Badoulot, and similar brokers in the arts. The quantity of these cattle-flies 
becomes frightful. How many there are in the world, who, on quitting their desk, 
or their public office, take a pride in calling your great men by their christian names, 
or addressing them, as loud as they can, by the familiar "til," or recounting some 
trifling details of their life, in order to appear their intimate friends. Impossible to 
escape from their ridiculous questions, their impertinent requests, their stupid ob- 
servations, their misplaced praises — more irritating still than their criticisms, and 
their disputes upon points involving your most intimate convictions — all brought 
forward in order to make a parade of their own prodigious judgment, their marvellous 
aptitude, and their incredible " vocation" for the arts ! I know a sculptor, who, 
during a whole winter, fled from house to house to avoid one of these dear friends 
of the arts, obstinately bent upon insinuating himself into his intimacy, under the 
recommendation of a host of names, which he intitled his "very good friends," and 
** brothers in kindred feeling." Our sculptor had at last escaped from his " bore," 
and lost sight of him, when, on setting off one day upon a journey, he found him 
in the diligence by his side. An " artistic" dissertation was opened upon the spot, 
and the sculptor had exhausted his whole stock of monosyllables, when, not knowing 
what to do, he turned to his persecutor, and, showing him on the seat opposite them 
a fat dealer in wools, who had half hidden his soul-less physiognomy under a black 
cotton nightcap, whispered in his ear, " Look at that fat old fellow opposite, so 
simply dressed; that's M. de Lamartine, who is travelling incognito. Pretend as if 
you did not know it." 

■f You don't say so," replied 'the bore.' "To be sure ! I now recollect him. 
He is grown very stout : however, there is no mistaking him." 

Thanks to this subterfuge, our sculptor was delivered from all further annoy- 
ance, to the great inconvenience of the fat dealer in wools, against whom the friend 
of the arts directed all the wit and attic salt of his conversation. The inspired tone 
of the one contrasted admirably with the heavy dulness of the other, all which the 
former explained by the poet's wish to remain incog. ; and during twenty leagues 
the sculptor listened to this burlesque colloquy with a gravity perfectly Germanic. 

In spite of certain disagreeable qualities, almost insupportable at times, my friend 
Badoulot has his good side : he avoids politics like the plague, and in that he differs 

R R 



306 



THE ARTISTS FRIEND, 



from another species of the " Artists' Friend," which is the most adroit of all. It 
is composed of men who have tolerably extensive connexions, and who make a pro- 
fession of crying up rising merit, of venerating the " ancients," and, in fact, of 
furiously admiring everything and everybody. They are the politest and humblest 
creatures in the world. Although continually giving their judgment, their criticisms 
are always well received, seeing that they never fail of being favourable. They 
encourage the arts, not with their purse, but with their counsels ; and it is a matter 
beyond dispute, that they are always considered the " big guns" of connoisseurship. 
The acquisition of a few daubs completes their reputation, and, all at once, they 
are invested with a name known throughout all France, which represents — nothing 
at all. 

The main object of their career is to obtain—no difficult matter — some trifling 
mission, the object of which is connected with history or architecture, or anything 
else : they then come back with a title, take up a position between those in power 
(of the paying department) and their friends the artists, so that all the money 
which passes from the one down to the other goes through their hands ; and gluey 
enough are their fingers — and they make themselves fortunes no one knows how. 

Reputations are thus formed, and inflated more and more, until they become of 
European celebrity ; when, one fine day, this great machine, which rises to the sky 
so round and superb, gets a crack ; it bursts like a balloon — nothing comes out but 
wind — and all that remains in your hands has not even the worth of a bubble. 
This species of " The Artists' Friend," is sharp enough, and it has been too 
little studied in general ; for, as these good people, behind their airs of universal 
benevolence, have their secret hates, their exclusive predilections, their prejudices 
and their interests, they are very frequently detrimental to the art, and deprive 
real merit of its recompense, in order to gorge their creatures, or the toadies of 
their caprices. 

" The Artists' Friend," on a lower scale, often puts himself into a state of 
vassalage to an individual whose theories he developes, and whose ideas he explains. 

Excepting this one person, all else with him go 
by the name of " cretin," — idiot — saving, in- 
deed, the dead, who serve as points of com- 
parison. The painter, however, has no more 
devoted servant. This kind of familiar arranges 
his pallet, puts the wood into the stove, under- 
takes all delicate commissions, and pays the 
necessary visits to the newspaper critics ; and, 
after all, solicits no other recompense than the 
honour of seeing his own head sketched every 
year in the back-ground of a picture. After a 
day employed in fluttering hither and thither, he 
will tell you at night, " We have worked hard 
to-day ; our sky is finished — our grounds are 
rubbed in — our figures are sketched out — &c." 
He is overwhelmed with fatigue, and delighted with the day's work, and far happier 




THE ARTISTS* FRIEND. 307 

than the painter himself, who generally has only the advantage of the first of these 
sensations. 

In the provinces, the " Artists' Friend," or, in other words, the hanger-on of the 
theatrical troop, is a lieutenant, or a lawyer, or a lawyer's clerk, or a liquor-mer- 
chant, or the banker's son, or a coffee-house -keeper ; but in any case, he has strong 
lungs and strong arms. In friendships like these the heart palpitates in the stomach, 
and the " fraternal cup" is never spared. The idolized cock-boats of Thespis re- 
ceive the proffered sympathy with airs of dignified condescension, and none so 
proud as your bourgeois, when he finds himself mixed up in all their petty passions. 
The rivalry between the singing soubrette and the 'prima donna causes an infinity of 
disputes, unless, indeed, the " singing gentleman" of the troop has prudently con- 
fiscated the latter to his own use, as is usual in French theatrical politics. 

French provincial comedians, in general, have preserved a sort of gipsey, 
wandering, romantic, patriarchal manner, which renders them far more entertaining 
than those of Paris, who become day by day more tiresomely " respectable." For 
some years past, however, an alarming symptom of that moral malady, which has 
deprived the comedians of the capital of their " colour," has displayed itself among 
those of the departments. This prosaic desire for consideration and respect gains 
ground among them : they aspire to the rights of the bourgeoisie, and the " Artists' 
Friend" is in their eyes an object of utility, as a sort of chaperon, whom they select 
from among the " crack people" of the town, and then bow to, flatter, and cajole, 
because he serves as a pedestal to mount them up to a level with the gentry of the 
place. Thanks to this officious patron, the actor is able to boast of his initiation 
into " all that is genteel," of being run after by " the very best society," and of 
having been ** literally torn to pieces" by all the " ladies of rank and fashion" in 
every town where he has appeared upon the boards. 

When he does not happen to roost upon the top of society's ladder, the " Artists' 
Friend" in the dramatic line, in the provinces, is obliged, in order to give himself 
the necessary elevation, to create himself a factitious importance, by bolstering 
himself out with connexions of weight. If it be in a garrison town, the task is 
easy. The "Artists' Friend" is generally the friend of "the officers :" his mous- 
tachio sprouts beneath the shade of theirs ; and proud he is upon a review- day of 
marching arm in arm with a red-pantalooned captain, marking the step with all the 
energy of his heels. It is a well-known fact, that the French " warrior bold" is an 
object of great veneration, and even fear, in the eyes of the provincial actor. The 
mutual friend of Mars and Apollo is, consequently, charged with the introductions 
between the artistes and the military : he has his entries everywhere, is the pet of the 
soubrette, can do what he will with the actress " who does the sentimental young 
ladies," and would venture, upon a pinch, to present an officer or two to the first 
singing lady. These advantages give him a certain standing at the barracks and the 
Grand Cafe, whilst his familiar intercourse with "the officers," of whom he makes 
a grand parade in the green-room, during the rehearsals, stamps him a young man 
of ton among the actors. About a fortnight after the opening of the yearly theatri- 
cal campaign, sounds the hour of triumph for the " Artists' Friend." He has the 
honour of introducing a captain and a lieutenant, his proteges, two veritable friends 



308 THE ARTISTS 5 FRIEND. 

both of the bottle and the drama, into the sanctuary, where, before the drawing up 
of the curtain, strut the Duke de Guise or Zampa, Lucullus or Jeannot, Richelieu 
or Monsieur Cagnard. With an air at once debonair and chivalrous, he presents 
his military gentlemen to his gentlemen " of the sock and buskin ;" he is admitted, 
thanked, and congratulated ; he is the great man of the day — the man who com- 
prehends " art/' and knows how to encourage it — and during the whole evening, 
he gloriously immolates the vulgar public as bourgeois, epicier, or p6kin. After all, 
there exists a great natural similitude between the military man and the provincial 
actor. Both wander from town to town, year by year — both at the same time full 
of independence, and yet bound to servitude — both in pursuit of vain glory, although 
by very different roads. 

Your friend of the arts and artists may generally be recognized by the manner in 
which he exaggerates the habits, manners, and appearance of the objects of his 
affections. His hat is more pyramidal, his cravat, to use the phraseology of the day, 
more "convulsive," his shirt-collar more turned down, his beard more moyen age, 
and his waistcoat more widely opened on his chest than those of the artiste. 
His furniture gives his rooms the look of a broker's shop; and he sleeps in a 
carved bed, all bristling with horribly pointed arabesques, where, if he were to move 
during his sleep, he would never wake again, as he would be sure to fracture his 
skull. His buffets of the time of Clodion le Chevelu utter hyena cries every time 
they are opened ; and he possesses a two-handed sword of the " Boar of Ardennes/' 
fabricated for six francs (for which he paid sixty,) out of an ex-bar of the iron gate 
in the Place Royal, so cruelly pulled down. The " Artists' Friend" has an utter 
contempt for his boot-maker, and his tailor, and his valet, and his grocer, and even 
his wine-merchant : according to his ideas, every man should devote himself to art 
and artists, and to nothing else — beyond the sphere of the arts there is nothing. 
Among those of the trade, however, he esteems only one, — the chosen one, — ac- 
cording to his dictum, " the first genius of the age." 

The " Artists' Friend" proceeds with uniformity in the commencement of his 
career, and the leading features of his origin are the same — a lively imagination, 
with unsettled tastes, and without activity, order, or power of imitation — the same, 
in fact, as in my friend Badoulot, who is a good example of the rule. But after a 
certain number of years, and aberrations of various kinds, very distinct differences 
manifest themselves — as many, indeed, in the several tastes, as there are artistes of 
different kinds in France. 

There are a set of old gentlemen in Paris, who may often be met with in the 
Tuileries, with an eye still beaming in the midst of a pale, withered, mask-like face, 
all furrowed with longitudinal wrinkles. These young sparks of a bygone age are 
carefully dressed up in the fashion of the morrow, and have infinite trouble in 
breathing within the walls of their tightened coat, which seems determined on 
giving their aged form an air of adolescence in spite of all the resistance of the carcase. 
The good gentlemen may be seen wriggling along the Allee des Feuillans, sup- 
porting themselves firmly, but hypocritically, upon canes which are really stronger 
than they seem, and giving themselves all the fascinating airs of persons walking 
upon eggs. An eye-glass hangs from their neck, which is carefully bolstered 



THE ARTISTS* FRIEND. 



309 




up in a high black cravat of the fashion of the 
Directory, intended to conceal the flaccid undulations 
of the skin about the regions of the lower jaw. Under 
a hat, exempt from all reproach, they contrive, by dint 
of pulling and twisting, to collect in tufts on either side 
of the face, a few hairs borrowed no one can tell 
whence. Those which come to life on the back of the 
neck are obliged to voyage over two thirds of the occi- 
pital sphere, and expire in scattered meagreness upon 
the frontal deserts. Every resource is employed ; every 
weak side defended : and every day the skilful general 
draws up his few remaining troops upon the open head. 
These creatures of a nameless age, and even pro- 
blematical sex, so completely has their first hoar-frost 
~- z ^~ been tweezered out, when once vamped up, and tricked 
out, and befrizzled, walk about as stiff as posts, like 
puppets upon wires or galvanised mummies, hawking about their eternal smile, stereo- 
typed upon a double set of Pernet's best false teeth. 

Let us follow one of these originals from one o'clock in the day — his hour of 
rising. After a short walk, he betakes himself to a reading-room ; when he has 
turned over the papers of the day, he takes a second little walk, followed by a visit 
to the pastry cook's, and then betakes himself to some club, where he finds nobody 
but one of the servants. He then commences a new assassination of his time until 
the hour of dinner, after which he makes a lengthy nap in a cafe. During every 
minute of the day the poor man has yawned ; all the symptoms of the heaviest, the 
densest ennui have passed in shadows over his face : his very back-bone bends under 
the weight of his ennui, and his legs quiver like reeds beneath it. 

Eight o'clock strikes, and he wakes up, shakes off the lead which weighed him 
down, pulls his rounded false collar up to his ears, combs on to his occiput the lost 
hair that is scattered back in his hat, smiles blandly and caressingly at himself, and 
rushes joyously out of the cafe, humming an air of some old opera. 

This good man only lives during four hours — not of his day but of his night. He 
is the friend of the actors and actresses of "the good old times," and of certain 
tragic authors now become scarce, whose species are disappearing from the earth 
like the mammoth, but who may yet be found with their feet already half 
buried in the tomb, and their head still preserved in the spirit jar of the French 
Academy. 

On leaving his cafe, he consequently turns his steps either to the foyer of the 
Theatre Francais, or to the house of some actor retired from the stage, or to that of 
some hexametrical ex-celebrity, where he finds a few crumbling fragments of classic 
columns, a few shades of Achilles or Agamemnon, called up by the Tiresias host. 
He there gives himself up to all the poetry of his ancient souvenirs, and to expansive 
demonstrations of friendship worthy of the times of Pylades and Orestes. The now 
forgotten triumphs of former times, and " love passages" long since stripped of their 
plumes, are called to mind. The conversation turns on pieces, parts, and illus- 



310 THE ARTISTS 5 FRIEND. 

trious personages, whose names no one ever heard : and in every possible tone 
of lamentation is paraphrased the melancholy exclamation of the poet, — " pre- 
terit os /." 

In the midst of this circle is one being to whom " the friend" in question is par- 
ticularly annoying, — a jeune premiere, no less eternal in her youth than the spring 
of the classic Idalia, for whom our good man entertains a platonic and unrequited 
affection. He has grown old in this monotonous attachment ; Cupid's arrow has 
become rusty in his bosom, and the wound has closed over it. This decayed old 
lover cannot find words enough to sufficiently bepraise her : he knows by heart every 
part she has ever acted : every v hit" the beloved object has made is engraved, 
together with the fatal date, in letters of fire upon his memory, and all the orations 
of past days are again brought forward by this tender and delighted historian, 
whenever he is called upon to celebrate a new triumph. He goes back to the times 
of (Edipe, and the Vestale, and Philinte, and the Petit Chaperon Rouge, and the 
Visitandines ; and, alas ! even of Rose et Colas, and the Mariage de Figaro. What 
a mortification, indeed, for this " sentimental young lady," who has just received 
a kiss upon her forehead from a mother, whose grandmother she might well be ! 
Her very rouge grows pale upon her cheeks, and her false hair stands up in horror, 
in the midst of the roses mixed among it ! As this fair goddess has never got 
older, — as she still persists in her primitive sentimental innocence, and perseveres 
in her shake and her roulade, her follower attaches his warmed-up souvenirs to 
this bunch of evergreens, and persuades himself that the evening twilight is the 
rosy-fingered Aurora. As to his own life and adventures, he makes no conceal- 
ment of them. 

Our "friend" has done nothing all his life — absolutely nothing. In 1782, he 
was an officer in the Queen's Regiment, and made acquainted with the Intendant 
of the Court amusements, who first invited him to supper with some of the " ladies" 
of the Opera. He has known Mole and Mademoiselle Clairon, and encouraged the 

debuts of the petite D ,. " here present," as he adds, " as adorable as ever," — 

(the petite D makes a most diabolical face at this announcement,) — and from 

that moment he never quitted the green-room. He knows all the French " classic 
drama" by heart, and it was he who taught Talma his famous Quen dis-tu ? He 
can still fancy he hears Lekain exclaiming, Et sa tdte a la main demande son salaire. 
He was very young, to be sure ; but he still shudders with poetic terror at the recol- 
lection of the sound of the tragedian's powerful voice, and the gesture with which 
he seemed to cut off his own head, and roll it under his fingers. He then turns to 
the jeune premiere, for whom he has condemned himself to adoration " for life," 
and tenderly reproaches this enfant, as he calls her — " ever beautiful, divine, super- 
natural, but inhuman" — for all the sighs she has stolen from his heart. A smile is 
all this constant affection receives. Once, it is true, he had some glimpses of hope. 
One day, after a little souper champ&re, he received some token of pity : they were 
to have met again — a rendezvous even was given; but, alas ! a jealous destiny over- 
threw all, — the catastrophe of the 10th of August. The conclusion of this history 
is never known ; for, at this critical point, the fair actress, calling up a convenient 
cold, coughs so loud, and gives a look so anything but tender, that her "friend" 



THE ARTISTS' FRIEND. 311 

leaves the rest of his truncated narrative in his pocket, from whence he draws a 
bonbonniere, quoting, from some ancient comedy, the words, — 

" Wilt please you take a piece of liquorice ?"* 

The Actors' Friend never omits an opportunity of making a quotation, — quotations 
generally leading to anecdotes, and anecdotes to biographical details. 

The friend of the ancient lyric and tragic drama has generally had several attach- 
ments, or rather friendships, founded on admiration. His furniture sufficiently 
attests the fact. Every piece of it is the legacy of some great actor, or a purchase 
made at the auction after his death. The walls of his room are hung with horrid 
little portraits, vilely engraved, and framed in that kind of black wood which the pre- 
cepts of Rousseau have dedicated to friendship. Even when rich, this strange mortal 
lives economically ; and his fortune is spent in magnificent presents, which he for- 
merly used to make in imitation of Duke this or that, and which are now a matter 
of habit, from which he does not choose to derogate. Besides, these sort of atten- 
tions are repaid with tokens of affection dear to his heart; and then, " We artists 
always are prodigal." 

When all his contemporaneous " glories" have disappeared, and he finds him- 
self alone, he retires in his turn, and " leaves the stage." His capital has been 
injured ; he has lived longer than he expected ; and he is forced to retreat to some 
ricketty old chateau, the name of which he wears, but which he had never seen in 
his life. His habits are completely changed ; his solitude freezes him ; his regrets 
undermine him ; and as, in his rage for quotation, " il fut toujours vertueux/' and 
consequently, " aime a voir lever Vaurore," getting up so early fatigues him, and 
he dies off with the first autumn leaves. 

Such is the ancient Friend of the Arts, always kind, affectionate, polite, modest, 
and well-educated. The type, however, is rare now-a-days. Actors care only for 
themselves: -their self-sufficiency, which disdains their authors' and projects their 
own laurels, rejects also the humble ivy which would fain cling around them. The 
Actors' Friend of the day is either a newspaper critic or a moneyed man ; and, in 
the former instance, he is called canaille as soon as his back is turned; and, in the 
latter, he is laughed at as a dupe. A few old poets, however, still exist, who have 
their old friends, to whom they read old poems upon old subjects, and whose chefs- 
d'oeuvre, " to the world unknown," are applauded by old hands; and they all agree, 
both authors and admirers, in deploring the bad taste of the times, and excommuni- 
cating and exorcising the thankless and ungrateful youth of the age. 

When an " Artists' Friend " has lived thirty years by his side, he considers him- 
self more than, a relation, — more than wife and children to him. From constantly 
following his idol, listening to him, and examining him, he has at length got to 
know every turn of his inmost soul. He never separates himself from his *' second 
self," and considers that he has acquired over him the most sacred rights. 

After the death of Mademoiselle Duchesnois, some one met an old gentleman 
whom he had known at her house. He was pale, and overwhelmed with despair, 
All consolation was tried in vain. " It is not so much her loss," he exclaimed 

* " Vous plait-il un morceau de ce jus de reglisse ?" 



312 



THE ARTISTS 7 FRIEND. 



" which affects me, as her horrible ingratitude. Would you believe it, Sir ? — She 
died without leaving me anything in her will, — me ! me who, for the last thirty 
years, dined at her house three times a week ! " 

In spite of the fervour of so pious an attachment, Heaven protect all artists from 
the questions and the arguments of their fatal "Friend." The evil one could 
raise up no better instrument to lead them astray into the sins of anger and im- 
patience. 

This aberration of a whole life is, as we have said, the result of a puerile pride, 
an ill-regulated enthusiasm, and a powerless ambition, to all which indolence gene- 
rally adds its share. Unfortunately, no talent is to be acquired by getting a sort of 
general smattering of scientific matters ; and your twopenny knowledge leads only 
to mere twaddling talk, and a perversion of judgment — the worst and first of the 
qualities which constitute an " Artists' Friend." 





THE CATHOLIC PRIEST. 



BY A. DELAFOREST. 




LURING the long struggles of our first Revolution, no 
social position was more constantly assailed and 
severely broken down than the existence of the Catholic 
Clergy. The nobility have resumed their titles, re- 
covered part of their landed estates, and received, by 
a legislative enactment, a magnificent compensation 
for their losses ; the middle classes, in their various 
grades, have gained a marked influence ; but the 
clergy — ridiculed and prostrated in the eighteenth 
century — proscribed and decimated by the Conven- 
tion — hated and persecuted by the Directory and its deists — protected, afterwards, 
by the policy of the Empire — patronized but too openly after the Restoration — and, 
however despised, treated with apparent respect by the Juste Milieu — the clergy 
have never recovered from the attacks of Protestantism, philosophy, and religious 
indifference. The position, fortune, and dignity of the Catholic Priest seem to have 
sunk for ever. 

In vain the " Assemblee Constituante" voted an annual grant of eighty millions 
of francs as a compensation for the spoliation of Church property : the brighter day 
that appeared to dawn for the Church brought back none of her lost splendours : — 

s s 



314 



THE CATHOLIC PRIEST. 



the generation of those mitred princes, whose magnificent and enlightened patronage 
shed its beneficent influence equally over all the members of their order, has passed 
away ; not a vestige survives of the diocesan conclaves, which, while they maintained 
the discipline and independence of the clergy, showed to the people the power of the 
national Church ; the numerous preferments, which, in their extensive hierarchy, left 
open for every Priest many situations, oftener given to real merit than to court 
favour (whatever may have been said of them), are now no more ; the landed estates 
that enabled their proprietors liberally to assist the poor, and also conferred on them 
the privilege of a seat in the council of the nation, are all swept away; the modest 
vicarages, the obscure but honourable houses of the humble curates and their aged 
and faithful housekeepers, have almost all disappeared ; and, with the solitary ex- 
ception of one asylum for the reception of twelve poor members of the Catholic 
clergy, established, under the royal patronage of a daughter of the illustrious house 
of Bourbon, by the greatest French writer of the present day,* there does not exist 
in all France, a shelter to which the poor Priest, left without resource after a life 
spent in the service of the Church, can retire to end his days in peace. 

The general situation of the clergy, created bylaws bearing the stamp of atheism, 
or at least of religious indifference, cannot but affect the Priest as an individual. 
His calling is not recognized by the temporal law until he obtains the title of vicar, f 
when he begins to receive an official salary out of the public purse. He is then 
considered a government officer ; and as such his annual salary is voted with those 
of all other public servants, from the king down to the last messenger ; and a sum 
of twenty- eight millions of francs being divided between the thirty thousand Levites 
that Government condescend to keep in pay for the service of the Church, each 
Priest's average income is under forty pounds a»year, and there is not one Priest for 
every thousand souls. 

Thus a great number of Priests, not included in the official list, which begins by 
the archbishops, and ends with the vicars, must depend for their existence on their 
own personal property, or their scanty share of the small fees collected in the church 
they attend, which are divided by the vestry under the superintendence of the curate 
of the parish. The immediate consequence of this material condition of the French 
clergy is, that their numbers are recruited solely from the lower classes, and from 
those poor but respectable families in which the young men, accustomed from 
childhood to hardship and privation, are prepared with more fortitude to bear the 
difficulties with which the Priest has to contend in his laborious career, under our 
philosophical laws, and in the present state of public morals. 

Thus, also, it must be acknowledged, those free and spontaneous vocations which 
sometimes appear in the highest stations of life, being now above any suspicion of 
ambition or cupidity, are the more strong and durable, and command the more 
authority and respect. The Catholic Church is disencumbered of those abb^s, 
who had only the name and half the costume of the Priest ; whose busts, fanci- 
fully sculptured, might be seen in the gardens of the nobility ; who used to write 

* M. dc Chateaubriand. 

f The Vicar, in the French Catholic Church, is the assistant to the Curate, whose situation cor- 
responds to that of the Rector in the English Church. 



THE CATHOLIC PRIEST. 315 

tragedies when they could not write songs or operas : a kind of irregular troop, 
without leader and without pay, who, strangers as they were to the militant clergy, 
brought by their conduct inevitable disgrace on the cloth in the eyes of the vulgar 
and the ignorant. Delivered from these idle and perverted members, the Catholic 
Church as at present organized prepares the young Levites, whom she brings up 
with care in her bosom, to the solitary and cheerless life that awaits them in 
the exercise of their calling. No one now thinks of railing or blaspheming against 
the Priest : it is no longer the fashion, and is esteemed vulgar ; but, prompted by 
strong feelings of antipathy, or dreading the restraint his presence imposes, or, 
perhaps, wincing under the tacit censure conveyed by his example, people shun the 
Priest, and exclude him almost entirely from their domestic circle. Either through 
systematic religious indifference, or on account of their irregular habits, or in 
obedience to worldly prejudice, they never think of living on terms of intimacy with 
a man for whose assistance they apply on every important circumstance of their life, 
and who will be called to afford them spiritual comfort on their deathbed. Truth 
to say, the Priest is far from desiring admission to the pleasures of the social family 
circle — he would not enjoy them. He avoids mixing with society, because he per- 
ceives, beneath an apparent kindness of manners, prejudices, want of sympathy, and 
adverse feelings prevailing against him ; and he will not excite or set them at 
defiance. The Priest's religious education has taught him, with humble resignation, 
to bear solitude, scorn, and all worldly tribulations ; and, prepared as he is to live 
apart from a world that cannot do without him, he is ever ready to tender his 
assistance when required. Such is the situation, above the reach of prejudice, 
assigned the Priest in the social scale by the Gospel and the moral code in all 
Christian countries. 

Without taking into account poor children brought up by country curates, and a 
few choristers educated by the metropolitan parishes, who generally complete their 
course of clerical studies, and take orders, in the seminaries the youthful pupils 
attend upon themselves in their rooms, out of humility and for the sake of economy; 
they wait upon one another at table, where, as well as in their walks, their pro- 
fessors and superiors are constantly with, them, and treated in like manner. The 
pupils take it in turns to say prayers, to preside over the dormitory and the school- 
room, to attend the infirmary, to superintend daily purchases, to run on errands, and 
to distribute among the poor the remains of every meal. The whole of the duties 
and operations connected with the management of the house being thus successively 
performed by every pupil, they all acquire early habits of order, of patient and 
regular command, and of easy and rational obedience. Abstinence, long meditation, 
pious exercises, — subdue the body to the will of the mind. There is no corporal 
punishment ; everything is conducted by, and yields to, the authority of reason and 
rule. When a pupil cannot or will not submit to these, compulsion is never resorted 
to, and he may leave the house as quietly as he entered it. Both in town, and in 
the country residences belonging to almost every seminary, the pupil's pleasure and 
recreations, varying according to age and taste, are lively and joyous, without being 
quarrelsome and noisy : some, during their rapid walk, enjoy a literary or philo- 
sophical discussion ; others play at ball, run races, or practise gymnastic exercises ; 



316 



THE CATHOLIC PRIEST. 



chess, backgammon, and billiards are reserved for those who are fond of more quiet 
games. 

Prepared for every emergency and for all the cares of life, there is scarcely a 
private distress or social change or agitation in which the Priest has not a part to 
play, and, with the salutary influence of his example, he invariably brings resig- 
nation, dignity, and the propriety inseparable from his character. 

Sometimes, on leaving the seminary, he is appointed tutor to the scion of a rich 
family, which continues or affects aristocratical tradition. At once grave and kind 
to his pupil, the Priest soon wins the respect of this constant and sharp- sighted 
observer of his actions ; and this respect, ere long, ripens into confidence and 
friendship, which the pupil, become a man and a father, seldom fails to transmit to 
his sons. Placed, by the character of his duties, in the double and difficult situation 
of an almost menial subordinate towards the head of the family, and the superior of 
the servants — at once master and servant — the Priest is never servile nor over- 
bearing, never haughty nor familiar. He is sparing of flattering praise, and ab- 
stains as much as possible from the exercise of his authority ; he is neither too 
humble nor too exacting; and after the turn through Italy, Switzerland, or Germany, 
his pupil's education being completed, whether the young Priest receive a pension 
or not, he almost invariably retains the friendship of his pupil, and the confidence 
of the family. 

The newly- ordained Priest who has no taste for tuition, or who is afraid alike of 
its advantages and its difficulties, is always anxious to perform his sacerdotal duties; 
and, after the Christmas consecration, his bishop appoints him resident Priest of 
some large parish in a great town. Let us follow him there, the better to appreciate 
the privations and the toils of the French Catholic Priest. His only income is 
composed of the tenth or twelfth part of the voluntary fees paid to the parish for the 
christening and commemorative masses, (marriage and burial-service fees belonging 
exclusively to curates and vicars,) and this precarious and scanty resource hardly 
enables him to provide the bare necessaries of life. He is obliged to take a lodging 
at the top of some decent but obscure house ; a pallet bed, a table, and a chair or 
two, compose the whole of his furniture ; and if he has any attendance at all, he 
is indebted for it to the private feelings of some honest charwoman, who finds 
a compensation in the enjoyment of her charitable feelings for her insufficient 
wages . 

This is not all. He will also visit the sick, the poor, the prisoners; and however 
difficult he might find it to surmount the natural dislike inherent to humanity for 
scenes of wretchedness and misery, his sense of duty, of evangelical benevolence 
and heavenly reward, will not desert him in his arduous task. But who will not 
sympathize with the painful depression of a cultivated mind, obliged constantly to 
commune with children, women, men of the lower condition, whose intellect is 
hardly open to any light, who know not how to discern the acts of their every-day 
life, who are ignorant of the value of the words they utter — half savage beings, who 
do not even present, as a compensation for their stupidity, the stimulant attraction 
of a conversion to make, of a new civilisation to prepare ? Who will not pity the 
mental torture to be endured by those constantly re-told instructions, by that 



THE CATHOLIC PRIEST. 317 

attendance to confraternities of religious old maids, by those unintelligible confes- 
sions, which form an essential part of the young Priest's duty, at the beginning of 
his professional career ? Such intellectual miseries are however supported by the 
Catholic Priest with patience and energy — almost with joy. But the heroic mis- 
sionary, who braves all sorts of dangers for the triumph of his faith, is he not in a 
much more enviable situation ? 

At the Church Catechism, the young Priest is obliged to blend, in his religious 
instructions, clearness — so difficult in such delicate matters, and before an infant 
audience — with variety, and even cheerfulness. He must, in order to engage his 
pupils' attention, intersperse with his lectures little stories, anecdotes, and even 
jokes. The latter, we must confess, are not always very pleasant, nor are they 
very well told ; but still they answer the Priest's purpose, as may be judged by the 
punctual attendance of the children to the catechism, by the progress of their 
instruction, and by their constant liveliness. 

It is not enough for the Priest to be well-informed, and to be skilled in the art 
of speaking ; he must' be also a proficient singer, and teach his young penitents to 
sing religious hymns. The pastor and his flock are not generally aware of the 
profane origin of the music adapted to these pious songs ; but, although it may 
provoke the sarcastic smiles of more knowing listeners, it is purified by the good 
intentions of the young choristers and the pious impresario. 

We shall not attempt to follow the Priest in the routine of all his professional 
duties, performing successively the christening, marriage, and burial services, our 
especial province being to observe and describe him out of church, in his con- 
nexion with the world and society. After many years of trial, his merit, not un- 
assisted by his family interest, or the patronage of some protectors, may obtain for 
him the appointment of vicar or curate; nay, perhaps he may be raised to the 
state of a vicar- general or a canon. Become bishop or archbishop — and, as nothing 
is impossible, some future day may see him cardinal and pope — the Priest can always, 
we shall not say hope, but fear (which is more consistent with his humility) to be 
entrusted with the spiritual government of the Christian world. Brought up for all 
situations of life, he is prepared for all changes of fortune, and will bear them 
all with equal dignity : his habitual chastity, poverty, and resignation, give him 
a complete control over himself. Indifferent, but not selfish — charitable, without 
parading any outward emotion — observant, without malignity— silent, without being 
disdainful — and cautious, although he does not lack courage — he will appear irre- 
proachable to the world ; and he will rather abstain from mixing with society 
than engage himself too warmly in its conflicts. You will never hear of the 
Priest except when you want him ; and be he poor or rich, in the lowest ranks of 
the church militia or among its highest dignitaries, he will be in close contact with 
every social crisis, without playing any conspicuous or offensive part. Has any one 
connected with the courts of law ever heard of a Priest appearing there as a debtor 
or creditor, plaintiff or defendant ? We know only of two recent exceptions, and, 
unwilling as we are to recal painful recollections, we must say, that one of the men 
alluded to was not French, and that both had been attainted by the discipline of 
Church before being found guilty by a criminal court. Still these two solitary 



318 



THE CATHOLIC PRIEST. 



examples, in our days, when all ears and all eyes are anxiously open to the smallest 
delinquencies of the Levites of the church, bear the most striking testimony to the 
high character of the French clergy, to which no other can be compared. One or 
two bad sheep in a flock of thirty thousand are hardly worth mentioning ; and the 
united clergy of Italy, Germany, Portugal, England, Spain, and both Americas, 
cannot boast, like the French clergy, of the mighty assemblage of so many virtues, 
united to such exemplary dignity, poverty, and learning. 

Buried now in a few legislative, municipal, and academic mummies, the spirit of 
Voltaire will no more invent and publish pretended misdeeds perpetrated by Catholic 
Priests. Calumny has made way for truth, and the newspapers are every day filled 
with descriptions of acts of courage, devotedness, and benevolence, accomplished 
by members of the Catholic clergy, whose example is in keeping with their best 
sermons. Here the archbishop of the metropolis, when a contagious fever is raging 
in Paris, can be constantly seen in attendance at the hospitals, adopting all orphans 
that the fatal disease throws upon his inexhaustible charity ; there a young vicar 
plunges into the river, at the peril of his life, to rescue the insane or imprudent 
victim, whom he saves from certain death ; another, braving the danger of a fatal 
conflagration, preserves the peasant's cottage, or the manufactory that gives em- 
ployment to many operatives. Again, it is a Priest who throws himself between two 
combatants misled by a false sense of honour, and a sincere reconciliation takes 
place upon the spot selected for deadly contest. Every day, in fine, is revealed to 
the public some noble or generous deed accomplished by members of that class so 
long devoted to the calumnies of the press. 

Let us again observe the Priest in his various avocations. 

The chaplain to the Royal Colleges cannot but see with painful feelings the indif- 
ference or aversion of the heads of those establishments to religious instruction ; but, 
nevertheless, he is not deterred from pursuing his beneficent task, and gives to the 
pupils the incessant benefit of his precepts, together with his example. 

The chaplain to the Prisons has to encounter less resistance from the keepers of 
the jail, than the former from the masters of the school ; and he never fails to give 
to the prisoners material assistance and spiritual comfort, more welcome and more 
profitable than it is generally thought in the world. 

It is our misfortune not to be able to say anything of the Priest on board of 
men-of-war, and in the army ; for, since 1830, it has been legally decided, that the 
soldiers and the sailors of the nation, be they ill, wounded, or at the point of death, 
need not the consolations and comfort which the military chaplains, after 
having shared their dangers, used to afford them in the field of battle or in the 
hospital. 

But there is another trial that the Priest is not denied. In his visits to the con- 
victs, in his pious attendance at the scaffold, where he accompanies the criminal 
who will in a few minutes suffer the pain of death, what resignation, what 
courage, what strength of mind are required to comfort, with looks and words of 
hope and peace, those miserable beings who have almost irretrievably lost all hope 
of pardon from their offended Maker ! Is there one among us, even moved by the 
most Christian feelings, and endowed, at the same time, with the power of resisting 



THE CATHOLTC PRIEST. 339 

the strongest agitation, who could bear — nay, who would undertake by choice, 
that terrible duty which the Priest accomplishes with such majesty, even when, 
his nature betraying the torture of his mind, drops of cold sweat appear on his 
forehead. 

And is this all ? No : there is something worse, and better. It is the missionary 
— not, be it understood, the missionary of the foreign and Protestant societies, who 
goes, not entirely regardless of his fortune, accompanied by his wife and children, 
driven in a comfortable carriage, or on board a first-rate ship, to sell with profit, or 
give away without discrimination, German or English bibles to people who know 
not, and will never know, a word of English or German : — we mean the Catholic 
missionary (of whom we intend some day to give a complete description), who 
accepts with joy every sacrifice, because he believes in the Word of his God ; and 
when he spreads it among those he is preparing for the happiness of Christianity, he 
knows he is advancing at the same time the progress of science, commerce, and of 
the arts, and thus promoting the glory of his country. 

And, with so many duties, with such abnegations and such poverty, some there 
are who would fain impose also on the Priest the duties of marriage ! Let us admit 
the truth of the sophistical doctrine of certain philosophers, and suppose the Priest 
married : how, then, will he be able to assist those unfortunate women who, in their 
griefs or their faults, can only have recourse to him ? If he have children, he will 
not devote himself to those of the poor ; if he have the wants, the emotions, 
inevitably brought by family and paternity, it will be impossible for him to be 
charitable, gentle, patient, discreet, in the midst either of his joys or his domestic 
sorrows ; or perhaps he and his will be open to the censure of the world, and 
the same assistance will not be claimed at his hands ; people will first lose their 
faith in him, and then desert him ; who can tell ? — perhaps they will despise him. 
After all, the Catholic Priest does not complain of the prohibition of marriage ; he 
knows its duties and its dangers, and is afraid even of its advantages and enjoy- 
ments. It is not only to follow the example of Christ — it is not only because the true 
meaning of the holy Scripture commands him celibacy, and because the discipline 
of the Church forbids marriage, that the Priest is adverse to it ; but he feels also 
how much the purity of his mind, the chastity of his senses, the liberty of his per- 
son, and the absence of all individual wants, are indispensable to the majesty of his 
calling, the dignity of his character, and the accomplishment of his multifarious 
duties. The obligations of the husband and those of the Priest would interfere 
with each other, to the detriment of both. 

There is in this rapid sketch neither exaggeration nor poetry. Plain truth is 
told, supported by undeniable facts. We have shown the French Priest in his real 
character, without the servile and injudicious veneration of narrow-minded devotees ; 
but we have also tried to vindicate him from the suspicion of hypocrisy entertained 
against him by all libertines. We have portrayed the Priest, not as he is mis- 
represented by silly people and slanderers, but as he is now — more the man of the 
times, more attentive to its wants, its signs, and its progress, than he ever was 
before, because experience and the calamities of the Church have not been lost upon 
him. 



320 THE CATHOLIC PRIEST. 

Are we to hope or to fear again to see the Priest — now, as at other times — meddle 
with political questions, and play a part in the contest and the government of kings 
and nations ? Will the Priest ever be the director of public affairs, and bring to 
the council of the nation the authority of his character, his prudence, his experi- 
ence ? Is it his duty ? Will it be in his power to do it ? This is a great question, 
of more importance than is generally thought by the vulgar. If we were to 
take only into consideration the high merit of some Priests of the present day, the 
talent of first order displayed in their writings, their eminent virtues, we should 
consider them as fully qualified to conduct the government of the state ; but we 
must confess that the majority of the clergy, in their opinions publicly delivered, 
seem adverse to it no less than the majority of the public. 

However this may be, to sum up the social and distinctive features of the physio- 
gnomy of the French Priest, follow him from the seminary to the college chapel, 
to the barrack, on board ship, to the font and to the altar, to the deathbed of the 
sick, to the cottage of the poor, and the wigwam of the savage ; observe him 
treading on the carpeted floors of splendid mansions, or visiting the convict in his 
cell, and accompanying him to the scaffolds you will always find him adapting his 
demeanour and his speech to times, to places, and to persons. The most charac- 
teristic trait of the French Catholic Priest — that which bears the impress of his 
peculiar education — is his disposition always to act with the most becoming pro- 
priety, his constant readiness to make sacrifices to every situation. It has been said 
with truth, that there is always some virtue concealed beneath the rigid observance 
of propriety ; and the Priest being the most perfect model of all sorts of propriety, 
he resumes in his life the practice, or at least the appearance, of every virtue. 




I FRUlTk»ER. 




THE FRUITERER. 



BY FRANCOIS COQUILLE. 




UITE dazzling to the eye are the brilliant shops of 
Paris, with their rich gildings, their rare marbles, 
and splendid mirrors. They are, in truth, no longer 
shops, but grand saloons of art, before which the 
humble customer stands gaping with wonder, and, 
not daring to enter, retires with his money still in 
his pocket. When wearied with this glitter, one 
stops with pleasure before the modest display of the 
Fruiterer : nothing is more agreeable, and refreshes 
more sensibly both the eye and the thoughts. 

Notwithstanding the apparent confusion of the humble shop, a kind of order has 
presided over the arrangement of the fruit and vegetables, whether hanging in 
bunches, tied up in bundles, heaped in pyramids, or lying scattered around. 
Bright-coloured carrots, onions, and long green and white leeks, frame the door- 
way like a rich garland ; a little lower may be seen, according to the season, 
turnips, asparagus, aubergines, or large summer cabbages, which contrast with their 
more aristocratic brethren, the elegant cauliflowers ; behind this rampart appear 
peas, beans, strawberries, currants, and cherries ; while outside the door is depo- 
sited, upon a ricketty stool, a large basket of mushrooms. 

T T 



322 THE FRUITERER. 

Were these productions of our own climate exotic, they would be no doubt much 
admired ; and yet the tropical countries, so proud of their bananas, their dates, and 
their pineapples, cannot boast any fruits more delicious than our peaches and 
apricots, more fragrant than our wild strawberries, more refreshing or livelier- 
coloured than our currants and cherries. 

All these treasures are placed under the eye and hand of the passenger, within 
reach of the thieves, of whom the Fruiterer does not even seem to think. Her con- 
fiding nature contrasts advantageously with the precautions of other shopkeepers : 
these have secret drawers, and strong boxes ; they hide themselves and their goods be- 
hind iron railings and trellis-work ; but the Fruiterer would put, without hesitation, 
her choicest fruits in the street. All places seem fit for the exhibition of her goods: 
her ever-open window, the step of her door, and even the chairs she arranges skil- 
fully outside, are laden with fruits. She may be seen passing and repassing, and 
threading her way easily through a labyrinth of vegetables. However mixed they 
may appear, she knows where to lay her hand upon those wanted, and her feet 
never tread upon them. After all, except for her eggs, she fears no breakage. 

The Fruiterer is one of the Parisian types, but she is not to be found in the 
fashionable parts of the town. In the Chaussee d'Antin, around the Bourse, and 
the Place Vendome, there are Fruiterers who style themselves Verduriers ; but there 
is not the Fruiterer. She flourishes in the Faubourgs Montmartre, Poissonniere, 
St. Denis, and St. Martin; she loves the Marais and the suburbs; there she thrives, 
and shines in all her natural vigour, — the damp and narrow streets are to her what 
a good soil is to her vegetables. 

The Fruiterer is generally above the middle age, plump, with an honest face, 
which prepossesses you at once. Her colour is not very high, like the fish-women 
and other occupiers of market-stalls. She has not the bold look, the masculine 
voice, or the gestures, which distinguish these ladies. There is about her something 
simple and rustic, sensible withal, active, and intelligent. She is careful neither of 
her person nor her language, and depends for her appearance upon no trickery 
of art. 

If her gown does not fit very neatly to her figure, it is perhaps that, having no 
longer any waist, she does not know exactly where to tighten it. She goes about, 
her sleeves tucked up to her elbows, showing arms of rather a dark red, and covered 
with a large apron, not entitled to much praise for its excessive whiteness. She 
is so fond of her every-day costume, that she keeps it even on Sundays: she changes 
her cap though, the coquette ! 

Such a woman, when married, is never ruled by her husband. The law, which 
has ordered obedience on her part, has made in that respect a mistake, as well as in 
many other things. The husband of the Fruiterer is a problematical being, who 
without doubt exists, but who is not seen, not known, and never even spoken of. 
He might be considered buried alive, so much is he hidden and eclipsed by his wife's 
ample rotundity and importance. It is said that he moves, breathes, and speaks 
like other men ; it is also asserted that, very early in the morning, he may be seen 
at the markets buying and carrying home to his w r ife the various articles for her 
trade, — that he helps her to wash the vegetables, and shell the peas. We think all 



THE FRUITERER. 323 

this very probable ; but, so far from giving his name to his wife, he loses even his 
own. He is called neither Pierre, nor Simon, nor Jacques. It is his wife who gives 
him the name of her trade. — The Fruiterer ! So is she called everywhere; and if 
by chance he is mentioned, he is known only by the name of the husband of the 
Fruiterer ! 

Such is the power of habit, that if a man should establish himself as a Fruiterer, 
he would immediately pass over to the feminine gender. 

The Fruiterer comes in the social scale just after the grocer, in that class mid- 
way between the rich and the poor. She has all the good qualities of the grocer, 
without perhaps any of his faults. The pretension of the grocer is well known. 
Notwithstanding his frank and mild countenance, his grade of Serjeant in the 
National Guard, and his obsequious bows, he aims at wit and fine words. There is 
about him a colonial and aristocratical perfume ; he is proud of his corner-house com- 
manding two streets, proud of the great families who honour him with their custom, 
and proud of the mahogany counter behind which sits enthroned his " spouse." 
The Fruiterer has none of this pride : her counter is a deal table ; her throne is a 
rush-bottomed chair ; her customers, tradesmen and poor people ; she keeps no 
books, and has never been known to have a cash-box. 

The most humble may enter familiarly her shop ; her charges are rather high, 
and she often abates her price, but what of that ? She writes not upon her sign 
the cabalistic words prix fixe, and therefore people have the right (now-adays so 
rare) of cheapening her goods. Where is the pleasure of buying, if one cannot 
bargain a little ? To take her at her first word would almost offend her. There is, 
respecting her, one fact worthy to be noticed. Butchers and bakers — those kings 
of shopkeepers — are often condemned for selling false weight ; the grocer himself, 
the type of honesty, has sometimes been found guilty on this score ; but the Gazette 
des Tribunaux, which exposes to the public all delinquents, has yet to inscribe on its 
columns the name of the Fruiterer, — she is conspicuous there by her absence. 

Let us consider a little how far extend her connexions, and what moral and com- 
mercial influence she exercises in her neighbourhood. She holds to everything, 
and everything holds to her. Around her shop, as a centre, other trades establish 
and range themselves ; and while the grocer and the wine-merchant take possession 
of the corners of the street, the Fruiterer reigns peacefully in the middle. The rich, 
who send their purveyors to the markets, need her not; but the working classes 
and the poor require her near at hand. Without her, the neighbourhood would 
not be habitable. Where could be obtained all those thousand little necessaries of 
life, and the every-day news, which to some is also a necessary ? How would the 
grisette, the student, or the artizan of all classes and callings, provide their break- 
fast without a bit of cream-cheese, or the fruit or walnuts which she measures or 
counts to them with a hand truly liberal? Could the small menage do without the 
carrots, cabbages, leeks, and onions, which improve so wonderfully the taste of the 
meat, colour the soup, and give it a flavour ? The native of Paris, who has seen 
nothing beyond the town, who knows not how the corn grows, and is ignorant of 
the time for the harvest or the vintage, follows the course of the seasons by looking 
in at the Fruiterer's. She is there to remind him of what he would perhaps forget: 



324 THE FRUITERER. 

that, far from the muddy streets, there are rich and smiling hills and verdant 
meadows. The love of nature is awakened in his heart; and some fine Sunday he 
determines to pass the barriers, — those Herculean pillars on which Parisian cockneys 
imagine they see written, " Thou shalt go no farther," — and ramble in the w r oods 
of Belleville, or the Pres St. Gervais. If, on the dusty roads, he congratulates him- 
self on the pure air he is breathing ; if, tempted by no matter what forbidden fruit, 
he misses his way, is found trespassing, and falls into the hands of the keeper, who 
has followed him step by step, — all these pleasures, this enchanting walk, these 
emotions so new and so varied, and particularly the sight of the green fields, to 
whom does he owe it all, but to the Fruiterer ? 

Every month brings its produce : sorrel, lettuces, celery, and endive, are by turns 
displayed in her shop. Then come the cauliflowers and the peas, those first indica- 
tions of summer ; then the strawberries, and the whole family of refreshing fruits. 
Now the time has come for new potatoes, all small and round, or slightly elongated: 
the potato alone is the Fruiterer's glory. Honour to the shop that supplies the 
poor with this natural bread ! But autumn arrives, laden with its brilliant tributes ; 
and though the winter produces nothing, it is decked a long time with the riches of 
autumn. When the country and the gardens are covered with snow, the shop of the 
Fruiterer — that artificial garden — is as well supplied as ever. 

The Fruiterer sells many things besides : she is renowned for her butter, cheese, 
and fresh eggs ; and shares with the grocer the honour of cultivating gherkins, the 
vegetable of proverbial celebrity. She keeps a variety of brushes, and mysterious 
brooms, whose uses are unexplainable. There are also pots of all forms and all 
colours, — vases more useful than elegant, but which are in very general requisition. 
Here, also, the good La Fontaine might find, — 

" De quoi faire a Margot pour sa fete un bouquet." 

Even the little birds are not forgotten : beside the chickweed (what would become 
of Paris without chickweed ?) there are suspended outside long ears of millet and 
little round cakes, with the deceitful appearance of echaudes. 

Lastly, you will find at the Fruiterer's those little money-boxes, just open to 
receive the daily savings of the poor, but which must be broken to restore their de- 
posits. Who does not know them? The money-box, so dear to the grisette, the 
shop girl, the school-boy, and the industrious workman ! The money-box, the 
savings' bank of innocent pleasures. The Fruiterer, that worthy purveyor of such 
a precious article, sells it for — a halfpenny. 

Flowers and fruit, cheese, butter, and fresh eggs, money-boxes also and chick- 
weed, no doubt can be bought at the markets ; but the markets are so far off, and 
time in Paris is so valuable. The shop of the Fruiterer is a little market estab- 
lished in every street ; each house sends there for its daily provision ; and even the 
grand mansions, when the markets are badly supplied, are obliged to have recourse 
to the humble shop, and are surprised to be so well served. 

You can now conjecture, and fully appreciate, the moral importance of the 
Fruiterer. None enters her doors without exchanging a few words ; her shop is the 



THE FRUITERER. 325 

favourite resort of servants, and through them all family secrets are revealed to her. 
Placed at the foot of those lofty houses, which contain each a little colony, she sees 
and she knows everything. Love affairs of young girls, quarrels, scandal of all sorts, 
— nothing escapes her; and her customers, who succeed each other without ceasing, 
and who bring her the tribute of their pence and their gossip, keep her constantly 
informed of all that is passing, not only in her own neighbourhood, but in the 
distant parts of the town. She is the standing confidant of all the nursery-maids. 
The portress does not enjoy half the respect and consideration shown to the 
Fruiterer. The portress is spiteful, peevish, and notoriously indiscreet. The 
Fruiterer is renowned for her discretion and the soundness of her advice ; and, 
besides, she is an established woman. She listens and talks both at a time ; often 
she interrupts herself to arrange some cabbages pushed out of place by an awkward 
foot, or a large artichoke which has just been separated from its companions. She 
has always a story begun, one of those interesting tales like the Arabian Nights. 
Her customers go in and go out ; her audience changes ; but the story continues : 
she loses herself in long digressions, and intersperses a thousand incidental anec- 
dotes ; but, after the manner of my grandmother's famous knife, it is always the 
same story. 

The Fruiterer carries her heart in her hand ; her friendship is sincere, and her 
obliging disposition well known. She is ever ready to serve others, and never 
refuses any assistance in her power. Although her trade, less than any other, can 
support long credit, she will not refuse to her poor neighbours a few farthings, and 
even a few pence, and to her pence and farthings are shillings. To the indigent 
workman, to the widow or the orphan, the worthy woman will give what is called 
good measure : alms nobly and delicately tendered, and for which she does not 
receive even thanks, for the persons she obliges in such a manner are not conscious 
of it. 

The school-boys, or the urchins in the street, who stop to gaze at and admire the 
unapproachable opulence of the grocer, contemplate with a more earnest and na- 
tural longing the good things of the Fruiterer ; often they determine upon little 
thefts at her expense : the design almost always succeeds, and then they scamper 
away in great haste to swallow all evidence of their delinquency. The grocer would 
despatch his bo}^ at their heels ; he would even, in spite of his dignity, run afte r 
them himself, and, with a formidable air, conduct them to the station-house. The 
Fruiterer, informed too late, runs out like a spider from her inner shop, and appears 
with her hands on her hips, and her cap slightly on one side ; she shouts Stop thief ! 
and Police ! and pursues the marauders with her shrill voice. If an officious neigh- 
bour succeeds in catching them, and brings them before her, she loads them with 
imprecations, predicts the gallows, and often ends by sending them home with a 
good lecture and a handful of cherries. 

Who will understand the joys, as well as the cares, of this peaceful existence, 
where each day resembles the other, and where the greatest social convulsions pass 
unheeded ? Napoleon used to say, that there was perhaps in Paris some being so 
isolated as never to have heard of his name. Well ! the Fruiterer, who knows so 
much of every-day life, knows very little of political events — unlike her neighbour, 



326 THE FRUITERER. 

the portress, who pretends generally to the knowledge of a statesman. Sometimes, 
in her leisure hours, the Fruiterer borrows of her neighbour the half of an old 
newspaper ; she reads rarely, and never learnt to read well, so she spells it with 
great trouble, and skips half of the words : she does not understand it much, but 
that is no doubt the fault of the newspaper ; and, besides, the end of the phrase or 
column will explain what seemed to her obscure or incoherent. The paragraph or 
the page finished, she has retained merely a few strange sentences and names she 
has heard pronounced before, but of whose real history she is ignorant. Tired and 
discouraged, she gives up the task, too fatiguing to her eyes and her intelligence, 
and returns to her old prayer-book — a book that she knows by heart, which does not 
prove that she understands it. But what matter ? the heart supplies the deficiency 
of the head. 

The Fruiterer rarely leaves her home ; so many persons choose her shop for a 
rendezvous, that she is never without company. On Sundays, when a bright sun 
has dried the pavement, she sits before her door and holds a drawing-room in the 
street, in the shade of the high houses, and by the refreshing coolness of the street 
fountains. While gossiping with her neighbours, she casts from time to time a 
contented glance at her stores. Others run to the barriere, and ruin themselves in 
dances and pleasures of all sorts : her amusements are all of a more tranquil nature. 
To discover a fine lot of vegetables ; to be able to show riper plums, larger eggs, 
fresher cabbages ; to hang out at her door, like a sign-board, an enormous mush- 
room, which will be pointed at and spoken of as the wonder of the neighbourhood : 
this is her pride, her joy, her triumph ; this is what she loves to see and hear. 

It is sad to think that even the finest characters should have their spots and 
blemishes ! The Fruiterer is jealous : her heart is vulnerable like Csesar's, and she 
will not be second in the street. The early fruits that a rival succeeds in procuring 
before her> disturb her sleeep ; the itinerant greengrocer, or the fruit- stall keeper 
under the gateways and at the street corners, who, having neither rent nor license 
to pay, can afford to sell cheaper, cause her anxiety and mortal displeasure. She 
inveighs against the police, and criminates even Mosieu, the prefect, himself ; and, in 
the excess of her passion, she exclaims, " If I were government !" 

She is accused of having implicit faith in dreams, and, with a view to their inter- 
pretation, she taxes her memory each morning to ascertain whether she has dreamt 
of dog, cat, or fish. We, who pretend to be strong-minded, must not be too 
severe upon this little weakness. It is an innocent recreation, and endless source 
of emotions which harm no one. Happy he, who, in the midst of the stern reali- 
ties of life, can be affected by a dream ! There is in this feeling more good- nature, 
more simplicity, and even more poetry, perhaps, than in a whole poem. Well! 
though she has been deceived so often, she still believes. Do not speak to her, ask- 
no questions, be careful not to laugh at her, and seek not to draw her from the 
sorrowful humour in which she appears to indulge. This day will prove unlucky. 
Her fruit will spoil, she will take some counterfeit coin, or she will find stones 
fraudulently hidden in her jar of butter. What, indeed, might she not expect ? 
She has dreamt a frightful dream, she has seen something fearful, and the remem- 
brance of it haunts her ; something which always forbodes misfortune, and which 



THE FRUITERER. 327 

she cannot twist into anything at all satisfactory. She has seen a cat — a black 
tom-cat ! 

The nature of some of her articles will not admit of her keeping a cat, the 
declared friend, or rather, perhaps, enemy, of cheese, for such excessive love almost 
resembles hate. The parrot is a luxury ; but she keeps a jay, or a magpie ; the 
parrots of the poor, which, with their chattering propensity, become to her formida- 
ble rivals. But, more generally, she suspends at her door a cage containing a 
goldfinch or a canary. The little songster, well supplied with chickweed and mil- 
let, and surrounded by vegetation, thinks himself in the midst of a garden, and 
under this agreeable illusion gaily sings all day long. 

On certain important occasions, the Fruiterer consents to tear herself from the 
narrow sphere, which is to her the universe, to visit the Tuileries, the museums, 
and, better still, the Jardin des Plantes. But to draw her from her retreat, it must 
be nothing less than the arrival in Paris of a country cousin, to whom she must do 
the honours of the capital. See then dresses herself in her best ; her husband, 
hitherto a nonentity, makes his appearance as real flesh and blood, and very much 
resembling other men. He carries a large red umbrella under one arm, and gives 
the other to his wife. The patriarchal couple advance slowly in the midst of the 
wonders that start up every day ; they enjoy the astonishment of the provincials, 
who seem petrified by the sight of so many fine things ; and are surprised them- 
selves at the various new buildings and many improvements since their last excur- 
sion. They scarcely recognize certain parts of the town, are soon lost in the new 
streets, and are obliged to ask their way. For a Parisian, what a humiliation ! 
The exhibition of pictures, which they endeavour to comprehend, and which they 
explain after their own fashion, causes them more fatigue than pleasure, and they 
are really happy only at the Jardin des Plantes : they are wild with admiration of 
the bears ; they can only leave them to visit the elephant, and the giraffe, which 
they persist in miscalling the girajie • they shudder with fear at the roaring of the 
lions and tigers, and make many wise reflections on the ferocity of the hyena, and 
the mischievous disposition of the monkey. 

Thus passes the life of the Fruiterer. Little by little, age bows her body and 
stiffens her limbs. She is still lively and good-tempered, but her movements have 
lost their vivacity. Who will succeed her ? She has a daughter, of whom she is 
very proud, and whom she asserts to be her living portrait. Contented and matter- 
of-fact as far as she alone is concerned, from the force of her maternal love she 
becomes romantic, and dreams for her child a higher destiny, a life without trouble 
or labour, and finally a rich marriage. The white hands, the taper fingers, of her 
Angelina, were not made to handle dirty vegetables, — therefore the young lady has 
been taught to read, write, and embroider. She shall be dress-maker, milliner, or 
even artiste ; certainly not Fruiterer, which, perhaps, might be better. 

One morning the shop opens later than usual, and, to the astonishment of all, a 
man with scared looks is seen wandering to and fro in the midst of the vegetables, 
treading on some, knocking down others, and unable to find those asked for. The 
husband has taken the place of the Fruiterer, for his wife is laid up ill ; but suffers 
less from the malady than from the annoyance and vexation of being confined to her 



328 THE FRUITERER. 

bed. The whole neighbourhood are concerned at the news ; the street is not strewn 
with straw to deaden the sounds, — useless struggle of the rich to allay pain, — vain 
precaution, that the horses' feet and carriage- wheels carry away ; but the neighbours, 
the friends of the good woman, all the gossiping sisterhood of the street, press in 
crowds to her door. They overwhelm with their questions, and bewilder with their 
advice the unfortunate husband, who does not know which to listen to. All 
recommend a different remedy, some wonderful recipe, whose sovereign virtue cannot 
fail to cure her : their tumultuous consultation makes a noise, a confusion, a strange 
medley of sounds, which goes on increasing until, being unable to hear themselves, 
they suddenly drop their voices, only to begin again a few minutes after. 

The day that the Fruiterer is able to reappear in her shop is a day together of 
fatigue and happiness. She must relate herself, in all its details, although her 
husband has told it a hundred times, the whole history of her malady. Her 
audience standing around, basket in hand, listen eagerly, and make learned com- 
mentaries upon the most trivial circumstance. The Faculty itself would, without 
doubt, be astonished. They then learn who is the happy neighbour whose remedy 
has been successfully applied. It is now a curious spectacle to join the circle, to 
look at the extraordinary mortal, contemplate her face, and study her features, while 
she so obligingly allows herself to be admired, Every eye is fixed upon her; she 
is envied her success. Her reputation is made ; she will be long spoken of in the 
neighbourhood, and consulted from all the adjacent streets. She will henceforth 
never want customers ; she is already enjoying her celebrity ; she is triumphant, and 
is happy. It is she who has cured the Fruiterer. 

Warned by this illness of her failing strength, the Fruiterer determines to dispose 
of her business, and quit the neighbourhood she has animated so long. Another 
succeeds to her popularity and importance. It is a great event in the street ; but, 
alas ! everything is soon lost in oblivion. Little by little, the former Fruiterer is 
forgotten, according to the way of this inconstant world, which never remembers 
that which it sees not. She has retired to the suburbs of Paris, and has a little plot 
of ground, which she sows and waters ; she now cultivates, but no longer sells, those 
much-loved flowers and fruits she sold for so many years when they were cultivated 
by other hands. She remains faithful to her early tastes and habits, and is to the 
end, at least with respect to the cabbage, like Boileau's rabbits, 

Qui, des lew tendre enfance eleves dans Paris, 
Sentaient encor le ehou dont ils furent nourris. 




THE "VIVEU R.' 



BY EUGENE BRIFFAULT. 




IFE is like movement," said one day my jovial friend 
Nollis, the most agreeable companion I ever knew, 
and who, in the gayest and wittiest society, is noted 
for his gaiety and his wit. " To teach or to explain life 
is impossible ; it is only by living that one learns how 
to live. Come, let us spend the day together ; so long 
as it lasts, I will hold myself responsible for your 
happiness. I hope to give you more practical in- 
struction in the art of living — 1 do not say experience, 
for the word is associated with old age in a way that I do not like — than you would 
acquire in twenty years spent in profound study and meditation. All the manuals 
of epicurism, the most famous examples, from Sardanapalus to Louis XV., from 
Lucullus to M. de Cussy, from Alcibiades to the Duke of Lauzun, are not worth 
twenty-four hours of Parisian life. Come with me." 

Such was the enthusiasm with which my friend pronounced this invitation, that 
I felt unable to resist : I obeyed, and yielded as if under the influence of a spell. 
Never before had I encountered such a mighty temptation. Already I could not 
help feeling enjoyment in my submission. My friend overpowered me ; I listened 
to his speech as if he had been a supernatural being. He continued, regardless of 
my emotion, "It is now twelve o'clock ; let us call on Adolphe ; we shall be in the 

u u 



330 THE "VIVEUR." 

very nick of time. The best hour to observe nature is at sunrise. I am about to 
introduce you to the real Viveur : be composed." 

Adolphe's residence is in the Faubourg Montmartre. He has, in the Rue Bergere, 
modest apartments between the ground and first floors, looking on the court-yard. 
When we entered, we were asked no questions by the porter, who smiled and 
nodded to Nollis. A dozen steps up the staircase brought us to a little door, 
without a bell, and which my friend almost broke open with three tremendous 
blows. We overheard a lengthened yawn inside, followed by an energetic impre- 
cation, and, a moment or two afterwards, we heard the heavy tread of naked feet on 
the floor, as if some one was jumping out of bed. The door was opened, and we 
caught a glimpse of an undressed gentleman, hastening to regain the bed he had 
just quitted. 

" Go to the devil, Nollis !" growled the awakened sleeper to my friend, who had 
proceeded comfortably to plant himself in an arm-chair. 

" Kept it up late last night, eh ?" returned Nollis, lighting a cigar that laid on 
the table. 

" Yes. Achille gave us a splendid supper, and it went off in the best style." 

" Where did you meet, pray, and who was there ? 

" At the Cafe Anglais ! All of us were there, — the old set, you know. A young 
gentleman from the country was introduced, who pretended to understand drinking 
champagne. Poor lad, he had not even conquered the rudiments." 

" What females were of the party ? 

" Why, we had none. Ernest would have brought his two opera- dancers, but 
we did not allow it. Gallantry is a great nuisance, even with ladies of that sort. 
Women do not understand supper : when they affect reserve, they impose a general 
restraint ; when they are free, they go to the other extreme. It was a great mistake, 
under the Regency, to admit ladies to the supper-table : in this respect, our fathers 
were decidedly wrong," 

" How late did you keep it up ?" 

" Till four o'clock this morning. The waiters were nearly fast asleep. But, my 
dear Nollis, I cannot perceive but with regret, that suppers are going out of fashion. 
I need not tell you what we have done to keep them in vogue, to surpass even their 
ancient eclat, and confer on them new lustre : all in vain. Supper, my dear fellow, 
the repast of epicures, is losing ground every day. It is no longer appreciated. 
In carnival time, it degenerates into a coarse feast of debauchery ; at other times 
it is forgotten, or not held in sufficient estimation. Dinner has superseded supper." 

" But supper shall revive again," cried Nollis with enthusiasm. " Is not the dinner 
hour gradually growing later in the evening ? Ere long, we shall not dine before 
the morrow. The time cannot be far distant when commercial and political dis- 
cussions, literary squabbles, and all serious trifles, will be banished from the dining- 
room. Supper will then flourish again. But our present object is to breakfast; 
what's your idea ?" 

" I'll tell you by and by. But I must first get up." 

While Adolphe was dressing, I carefully scrutinized the apartment and its owner. 
The furniture was not rich, but it had evidently been selected with great taste. 



THE "VIVEUR." 331 

It unfortunately bore the appearance of extreme neglect, and it was easy to perceive 
that Adolphe did not pride himself on its careful preservation. A few books were 
lying about the room, among which I remarked Gil Bias, several of Crebillon's 
novels, a copy of Horace, and some odd volumes of Voltaire. Two little groups 
of statuary, trophies of the carnival, representing a galopade and some other dance 
in vogue at the "Chaumiere," — scenes of the Bal Cbicart drawn by Gavarni, — a case 
of cigars, a knife-box, a lump or two of sugar, the standing part of a bottle of brandy, 
an unopened bottle of eau-de-Cologne, and six or seven louis, were scattered 
here and there in confusion, from the dressing-table to the sofa. The adjoining 
room, which was used as an antechamber, was still more modestly furnished : no 
ornament was visible except a broken pane in the window, a pair of recently polished 
boots, and one solitary chair, upon which the porter had deposited Adolphe's care- 
fully brushed clothes. 

Adolphe is about the middle height, and stout in proportion ; he has a remarkably 
round face, blue eyes, and a very good complexion, notwithstanding the general 
expression of fatigue that pervades his features. His lips are rosy, his teeth white 
and regular, his hair is fair, and his countenance extremely pleasant ; he is about 
thirty-four years of age, shows a precocious disposition to corpulency, and his appear- 
ance is indicative of physical strength and good-nature. 

" I am growing fat," said he to Nollis ; " but I console myself by the reflection 
that stout men have always been the best, and consequently the happiest. All great 
criminals and tyrants were men of slender bulk." 

"True. But genius is thin." 

"And Napoleon ?" 

" Directly he began to grow fat, his good fortune deserted him." 

" Well, have it so ; but witty men are generally fat." 

" Still genius is father to glory." 

" But wit implies happiness. Am I to understand, Nollis, that you mean to 
evaporate into poetry ? Epicurism, my fat friend, epicurism is our lot. Whatever 
we may do to spiritualize ourselves, we shall ever belong to the sensual school. It 
is our destiny as well as our choice." 

By this time, Adolphe had finished his toilette. His costume was simple, neither 
too much before nor behind the fashion ; it was remarkably adapted to his person, 
and all constraint was skilfully avoided in its adjustment, without the slightest 
violation of custom or propriety. I had already noticed the exquisite cleanliness and 
nicety which presided over all the arrangements of his toilette : nothing could be 
more refined. 

" Will this gentleman accompany us ?" said Adolphe, turning to me. 

" Of course," replied Nollis ; " why else did I bring him ? Where are we 
going now ?" 

" Some distance." 

" Indeed !" 

" Now don't be alarmed, we are going to Bercy. Sir," he resumed, observing 
me involuntarily wince at the mention of Bercy, " you must not be too fastidious. 
I am well acquainted with all the fashionable resorts, and frequently visit them ; but 












332 THE "VIVEUR." 

I prefer the good ones. If you would sooner go to Tortoni's, I will accompany you. 
It is, beyond doubt, the prettiest cafe in Paris, for breakfast. The sideboard is well 
supplied with every delicacy, the company is pleasant, and conversation is free and 
polite : on the whole, I know of no more agreeable repast than a well-appointed 
breakfast at Tortoni's ; but I want something more. We three are sufficiently well 
born and brought up not to fear spoiling our manners, and we are, moreover, 
answerable to no one but ourselves for our behaviour. So far as I am concerned, 
Paris contains individuals of two classes only, — those who are acquainted with me, 
and those to whom I am not known ; the former know who I am, and what need I 
care for the opinion of the latter ? At Bercy, we are sure to find fresh sea as well 
as fresh-water fish, excellent people delighted with the honour of our company, a 
charming view from the window, and such wine as is not to be met with elsewhere. 
Now you know my reasons for selecting Bercy, gentlemen, perhaps you will show 
cause why Bercy it should not be." 

Nollis looked at me, but my mind was made up. I took Adolphe's hand, and 
exclaimed, " To Bercy, by all means." 

Adolphe was perfectly right ; we had a capital breakfast. Before we entered 
the house, he chatted a moment with the pretty oyster girl ; and, if I am not mis- 
taken, he patted her cheek. She herself brought in our oysters on a large dish, 
and laughed as she recommended us to swallow them alive, and in their water. The 
Chablis was first-rate, golden, and admirably dried and pearled ; the rump-steak 
was seasoned with a sauce, prepared according to Adolphe's own recipe ; the soles 
were dressed after a new method that he had just imported from England ; and, 
finally, a dish of matelotte, concocted after the best tradition of the place, crowned 
the breakfast, which was incessantly moistened by excellent burgundy. Adolphe 
told us that it was not advisable to drink claret in the morning, and promised, at the 
same time, to give his reasons at dinner. 

Nollis had introduced me as a promising young man, and before breakfast was 
over, I and Adolphe were the best friends in the world. I was aware that he had 
come to Paris with a view to study for the bar ; but after taking his degrees, he had, 
without any bad disposition, quietly indulged his natural love of pleasure, almost 
abandoning his studies. Like most young men without a fortune, he had framed 
several projects, and involved himself in debt. All his speculations he had suc- 
cessively given up, but his debts remained unpaid. Adolphe's present hobby was 
literature, the pursuit of which he esteemed a kind of leisure ; but he was unable to 
resist present enjoyment for the sake of the future. Although he was always 
struggling against fresh difficulties, he was, at the same time, following new pleasures, 
and used to say that, notwithstanding his troubles, the side of happiness was the 
strongest in the balance of his joys and miseries. His morals were not extremely 
severe ; he was certainly incapable of a cowardly, dishonest, or bad action. But 
pleasure had such an attraction for him, that he was ever ready to make any sacrifice 
to its enjoyment. It was more than his principal affair — it was his only affair : he 
was constantly running after it, wherever it could be found, and thus contrived to 
prolong his youth. 

He was, after all, desirous of occupying the least possible place in the world ; he 



THE " VIVEUR." 333 

cared very little for the independence of his person, provided he conld secure the 
liberty of his tastes. " Give us this day our daily bread." This sentence was his 
only prayer. 

The scene of our conversation was a verandah, illumined by the genial rays of a 
cloudless spring sun. The river and the quays were animated by the bustling 
movements of the daily traffic. Steamers were passing up or down the river every 
instant, and the thousands of pipes and hogsheads of wine and spirits lying along 
the quay, the busy stir of trade carried on in the midst of bottles and glasses, excited 
our friend : he drank and spoke, praised the wine, and expressed his admiration of 
the interesting scene before him. After having much admired and drunk, he partook 
of coffee, prepared by himself, imbibed three glasses of various liqueurs, and became 
unsteady. He perceived me looking at him with painful surprise. " You see why 
I brought you here to breakfast," stammered he : " one cannot take one's cup at 
Tortoni's : but 'tis shocking to intoxicate oneself at this early hour in the day. I 
am afraid I have spoken too much ; it is a fault — a very great fault — do you under- 
stand, young gentleman." 

His friend Nollis laughed, and took him under his protection. 

It was three o'clock. I was anxious to know how our Viveur would spend the 
interval between breakfast and dinner, and thought that the best thing for him to 
do would be to indulge the ante-prandial nap, in imitation of Boileau's prelate. 

Adolphe was already outside the door, amusing himself with the oyster- girl, and 
cracking his jokes with the workmen, who were pleased with his humourous sallies. 
A hackney-coach passed, when Adolphe hailed the driver, and in a stentorian voice 
desired him to pull up. We entered the vehicle, and drove to the Champs Ely sees. 

Adolphe's good humour knew no bounds ; he reminded Nollis of his best stories, 
and of certain merry adventures they had had in company ; he dwelt with ludicrous 
gravity on the miseries of inebriety, expatiated on the mistakes committed under its 
influence, spoke of the bright flashes of wit that wine alone can inspire, and passed 
in review various remarkable incidents in the lives of some of their best companions, 
emphatically styled, by Adolphe, the first " glasses" of their day : the Viveur swears 
by his glass, as the knight of antiquity used to swear by his sword-blade. 

Adolphe's fund of stories and anecdotes seemed inexhaustible, and he had the art 
of never tiring his delighted auditors : his tales reminded me of a chapter of Gar- 
gantua, and of Grandgousier. 

Our friend told us of a certain Viveur who, seeing one of his companions, after 
having been too liberal in his libations to Bacchus, lying insensible in the street, 
conceived the splendid idea of placing a lantern containing a lighted candle on his 
body, to save him from being run over by carriages. Of another, who, anxious to 
make the acquaintance of a gentleman renowned for his convivial qualities, contrived 
to obtain entrance in the night to the latter's lodgings, and, without awaking him, 
to lay the cloth, deck the table, and serve up a sumptuous supper. That done, the 
Viveur, noiseless as a ghost, gently awakened the slumbering bon-vivant, and 
motioned him to rise from his bed, to take a seat at the table, and to partake of the 
supper. Both gourmands ate and drank till dawn, without uttering a syllable. At 
last, about daybreak, the gentleman favoured with this strange visit broke silence, 



334 



said he: " B- 



• is the only person in the 



til 



" You must certainly be B 

world capable of acting as you have done, and no one but myself could suffer it." 

We were told, also, the bon-mot of a Viveur, who, having just come into some 
property left him by his uncle, gave this laconic account of the funeral : — " We 
legatees were in tolerably good spirits ; to the rest my uncle's death seemed a 
matter of utter indifference." 

Sometimes Adolphe launched into the heroic style. In July 1830, a Viveur had 
a bottle of champagne iced before a wine-shop, opposite the Louvre, exposed to the 
fire of the Swiss troops ; and having drank it with a friend or two, coolly returned 
to the attack. A Viveur having his right arm fractured in a duel, quietly remarked 
to his second — "Now I shall be obliged to carry my glass to my lips with my left 
hand." 

Our modern Lucullus's tales enabled me to appreciate the force of this saying of 
a Viveur, celebrated for his wit, and universally courted : — " I dine every Wednesday 

at Mdlle. M 's : would you believe that she had the ingratitude not to make 

me a present last New Year's Day ?" 

We heard the story of the party of Viveurs at Montmorency, who hired a band 
of blind fiddlers to play to them at dinner. Nothing was said by the convivialists 
that might offend ears the most polite, and these honest musicians were pleased at 
the thoughts of having fallen into such innocent company. " They little thought," 
said Adolphe, " that they were present at the Sabbath of a set of demons, who con- 
cealed their wickedness under the language of angels." 

The great Viveurs of the present day were next passed in review by Adolphe. He 
assured us that they are to be found everywhere, in both chambers as well as in the 
council-room, on the bench as well as among the high officers of state ; that they 
are decorated with orders, enriched, and enobled, but that they very seldom mend. 
" However they avoid public orgies," said Adolphe, " they indulge secret and 
mysterious pleasures." 

Adolphe owned that he entertained a strong prejudice against fashionable society. 
He found great fault with the useless luxury, the ungovernable propensity for 
gambling, the ruinous amours of high life. All his indulgence he reserved for the 
magnificent suppers by which night is brightened, for the worship of physical 
beauty, and for the poetry of the senses. In all the glorious excitement of hunting 
parties and races, in the steeple chase as well as in following the hounds, our Viveur 
could behold nothing but the prospect of a halt, and an exquisite venison dinner : the 
cup, elegantly carved, won by the conqueror, brought to his mind no idea but of 
bumpers of Xeres. 

Adolphe's amusing sallies shortened the road to the shooting-gallery. Our friend 
was received there with acclamations, and welcomed with shouts of joy. In a 
minute twenty bets were laid and twenty glasses filled with champagne ; biscuits 
were handed round, and amateurs took their aim with one hand, having their wine- 
glass in the other. Adolphe's star was in the ascendant : though his legs tottered, 
his hand was steady, and he won every wager. 

From the shooting-gallery Adolphe took us to St. Cloud, where we strolled round 
the park, and each of us drank a bottle of soda-water. Prompt and wonderful was 



THE " VIVEUR." 335 

the effect of this specific ; a few minutes before, the thoughts of dinner would have 
frightened me, but I now began to feel very hungry. 

After a short stay at 's estaminet — where Adolphe treated us to a glass of 

absynthe, smoked a pipe of tobacco, and resumed, for a little while, the easy manner 
he had displayed in the morning at Bercy, — at seven o'clock we sat down to dinner 
at Very's, not in the public room, at that hour generally filled with people of rank 
or importance, but in a private room on the first floor. Our bill of fare was simple. 
We had a dish of Ostend oysters ; soup a-la-julienne, trout, roast leg of mutton, 
beans, and asparagus ; claret ordinaire, and iced madeira. Adolphe objected to 
claret for a breakfast wine, as being too weak to restore the damage done to the 
constitution over-night, and banished burgundy from the dinner-table, as being too 
hot, and apt to overload the mental faculties. He would not allow champagne at 
breakfast, but he admitted no other wine at supper. He esteemed iced madeira to 
be one of the most brilliant conquests of modern times. 

The dinner was long, and animated, and Adolphe entertained us with a description 
of all the varieties of the genus Viveur. He maintained that he was more inde- 
pendent and free than either the epicure or the Sybarite of antiquity ; more en- 
lightened than the roue\ that fanfaron of vice, much above all similar products of 
former periods, from Athens to Florence, from the time of Pericles down to the 
Directory. The Viveur was for him the true representative of a real civilization ; not 
aiming at an ideal and imaginary excellence, but seeking only the realities of life, 
and following the precept laid down by Adam Smith, — to be, and to be as well as 
possible ; practising, with great ingenuity, two rules professed by two eminent 
philosophers of the nineteenth century : to enjoy everything — to refuse oneself 
nothing. Adolphe pretended to be a wise man among the wisest ; his life was in 
constant keeping with the exact tendencies of the age ; it represented them all, free 
from their miserable selfishness. The Viveur owes his existence to a calculating 
and enlightened age : he is the offspring of reason, exclusively applied to sensations. 

In a less elevated sphere, many are the varieties of the Viveur. The artist, who 
has restored the "cabaret" haunted by his predecessors; the Viveur w r ho partakes 
of the joy of all, and does not mind forgetting a little his dignity to enjoy animated 
pleasure without constraint — or who, during several months, abandons himself to 
the popular whirlwind, as great lords used to go formerly to dance in the " Por- 
cherons ;" the one who willingly condemns himself to six days of hard labour, to 
live fully on the seventh ; the Viveur of merry stories, who laughs, sings, drinks, 
and descends, tottering, the river of life ; and at last, the one that nothing can divest 
from the sweet attractions of his precious bottle, full of ardour for work, but still 
more fond of indulging his laziness. Beyond this, all is disgusting. 

Out of Paris, the Viveur would die of grief or consumption. "The country," 
said Nollis, " seems to me nothing but an immense safe ; I would go there no more 
than I wish to pass through the kitchen before sitting down to dinner. Provincial 
palates are stupid : they eat, but they eat without discernment : the country Viveur 
is not even a gourmand, — he is a glutton." 

Of all foreign people, those who are the most congenial to the propensities of the 
Viveur are certainly the English. Adolphe recollected with sympathetic emotion 






336 THE "VIVEUR." 

that he travelled once from Turin to Paris with an English gentleman, who knew 
only the different towns where he had been before, by the dining-rooms of the 
hotels where he had stopped. 

Adolphe is member of no singing society, but he knows the best and the cleverest 
songs of the most popular authors, and he knows, also, many songs that have no 
acknowledged authors, but which would do credit to any. He is full of sketches of 
gay life, recollections, caricatures, and jokes, the most grotesque and the most 
amusing, which are sure to make you laugh outright. He knows better than 
anybody the way of keeping his companions in high spirits, and he seems as if it were 
his duty to ensure the happiness of all who surround him. Adolphe is a compound 
of the artist, the gastronome, the good fellow, and the bon-vivant ; there is something 
about him which reminds one at once of Desaugiers, Philibert cadet*, and Don Juan, 
less his villany and his love of women. Of all types, happy, heavenly, or devilish, 
he has taken what can best compose an intellectual being, exclusively addicted to 
pleasure. Morally speaking, here is his picture, drawn by himself : — " I havje no 
vices," he used to say, " but I have almost all faults." 

His existence has had only one end : to know, love, and serve pleasure, and in 
such manner to enjoy the realities of life. His porter is his only servant ; he has 
taught and drilled him, and we may almost say brought him up ; he is to Adolphe 
more than a servant, he is a friend ; that man has for him the solicitude and the 
love of a parent. " What is generally your first business when I come home ?" one day 
Adolphe said to him. " Why, 1 look carefully at my master, to know if I may let 
him walk by himself, or if I must lead him, or carry him." Thus he has made a 
catechism for the use of his porter. 

Adolphe hates study, but ennui is what he fears most in this world ; he is less 
afraid of pain. The future has to him no value ; he does not know distinctly what 
it is, and does not believe in it. He enjoys only the present. 

He left us early, after our dinner at Very's. He was invited to a supper of eminent 
Viveurs. Great toasts were to be proposed, and a grand match for the Herculean 
cup was intended between the notabilities of the meeting. " It will be," said Adolphe 
to Nollis, "a renewal of the great deeds that we have performed together." In 
fact, it was to him a tournament, and he prepared himself for it, like a noble knight, 
by a long walk and the use of sherbets. It was understood that each member of the 
pack was, before sitting down to supper, to have his name and address written upon 
a label attached to his person. This means was devised to recognize the dead when 
the battle would be over, for it was a deadly contest. 

The king of Viveurs has a very strong constitution ; he thinks that there is some 
intellectual merit in being in good health. The death of one of his illustrious com- 
panions was announced before him some days ago. " I cannot believe it," rejoined 
Adolphe, " he was too clever to die so soon." He was quite right ; his friend is 
still alive. In his opinion, fools only can think of making a short and joyous life. 
The Viveur tries to embellish his existence, to enjoy it the longer. 

The Viveur's hell is the gout. It is to him what remorse is to a criminal life. 

* A celebrated personage of a French comedy, " Les Deux Philiberts." 



tV?^ 





THE WET-NURSE. 



BY AMEDEE ACHARD. 




UFFICIENTLY protected by his bachelor state from 
the resentment of all present and future nurses, which 
would otherwise have fallen heavily upon his race, the 
author of the present paper has to expose many little 
vices, many worldly peccadillos and worthless qual- 
ities ; and nothing, bachelor as he is, could give him 
the necessary courage for his bold task but the conso- 
ling thought that, generally, wet-nurses cannot read. 
Whatever might have written Jean Jacques Rousseau upon that subject, for 
a long time to come, and perhaps to the end of the world, the ladies in France, and 
particularly in Paris, will not suckle their children. Most of them are, no doubt, 
excellent mothers, and irreproachable in their conduct ; they have been taught to 
respect opinion, and to fear scandal. They know to a fraction the number of smiles 
and waltzes they may hazard without the least blemish to their reputation, and they 
would, perhaps, suckle the offspring that Providence sends them, had not their 
good intentions to contend against two insuperable obstacles, — the wishes of their 
husbands, and their love of pleasure. 

For these unfortunate ladies, society is an imperious despot, to whom they must 
yield obedience from the fear of risking the cheerfulness of their homes. 



338 THE WET-NURSE. 

The ball admits of no rival, and if young married ladies were to devote their lives 
to the cares of maternity, what would become of fetes, dances, and concerts ? The 
bedchamber would be a cloister, inhabited by solitude, and many high dignitaries of 
state, many satraps of finance, would deplore the practice of a virtue which would 
seclude from the world those charming beings, who, by the power of their wit, and 
the charm of their smiles, lend them, in many instances, a material assistance in 
the execution of their projects. 

Moreover, in this calculating age, when everything is reduced to figures, husbands 
know pretty well that there are many economical expenses, and expensive econo- 
mies ; they are aware that all women, however bright their eyes or brilliant their 
complexion, are more or less consumptive, more or less liable to gastric affections. 
Suckling would only hasten the developement of the malady which their rosy lips 
inhale in the warm and perfumed atmosphere of balls ; and, the baby once weaned, 
a tour in Italy or Switzerland, or a journey to the waters of the Pyrenees, would be 
indispensable, to restore the precious health weakened by the duties of maternity. 

Thus, everything considered, it is less expensive to have a nurse than to travel 
post with an interesting invalid, who seldom fails to make her sufferings the excuse 
for indulging her most extravagant whims. All husbands know this : therefore, 
when, in conformity to the divine law, which, from the beginning of the world, has 
enjoined man to increase and multiply, a rich lady in the high class of society is 
near her confinement, the family doctor is desired to look out for a young and healthy 
nurse. 

Through the agency of this personage, who tries not to lose his importance under 
his youthful appearance, the nurse is soon brought from the country. Whether she 
arrive from Normandy with the traditional high cap, or from Bourbonnais with the 
straw hat turned up and trimmed with velvet, she is always a strong and powerful 
young woman, whose good organization is shown by the vigour of her form ; and it 
is conspicuous enough that she bids fair to supply an abundant and wholesome 
nourishment to the infant sleeping in his cradle. She is therefore immediately 
installed ; her room communicates, by a closet, with that of her mistress, and all 
luxurious comforts are provided for her. 

This woman, fresh from her native fields, used only to the hard work of her 
household, the unceasing labour of a farm, transplanted suddenly into the midst of 
splendour, is at first bewildered with the riches that surround her ; she dares scarcely 
use the fine things intended for her service, nor permit herself to touch the fine furni- 
ture in her room. Silent and timid, she obeys without replying, moves without noise, 
looks on the ground, and supplies her nursling with sweet and wholesome food. 
Her temper seems as smooth as her cheeks ; mild, attentive, modest, and kind, she 
is always smiling, and grateful for everything. Her disposition appears as calm 
and undisturbed as the flow of a little rivulet over a bed of sand and moss ; and 
nothing can shade the soft light of her eyes, or wrinkle the surface of her smooth and 
polished forehead. The young mother congratulates herself upon the lucky chance 
of meeting with such a treasure of a nurse, and is astonished that so much angelic 
sweetness is to be found in the garb of a woman. 

However, it is only the brilliant and cloudless morning preceding a stormy day. A 



THE WET-NURSE. 339 

month has hardly elapsed, when already little fits of bad temper manifest themselves, 
and cause that mouth to pout, which hitherto had never opened but to smile ; frowns 
disfigure the smooth forehead ; quick words, grumbled in a low voice, accompany 
abrupt gestures, which deprive some china cup or saucer of its fair proportions, 
and the child sleeps, if it can, without its lullaby. 

The Wet-nurse is a true daughter of Eve. The lady of the house discovers that 
the angel is only a woman, and what a woman ! — full of deceit, selfishness, and 
obstinacy. 

However, the transformation is not effected with the stroke of a magician's wand • 
the woman unveils herself slowly, — her progress follows rather an oblique direction, 
but you may be quite sure that it will not be long before the mask is entirely thrown 
aside. The first symptoms of the change are generally shown in the servants' hall. 
For some time her timidity, as well as the cunning natural to country people, has 
covered with a deceitful veil the inequalities of her temper ; but they now break 
forth at the table where assemble cooks, footmen, grooms, and ladies' maids, to 
devour the good things of this world, and to repose from their laziness. 

The wing of a fowl is often the apple of discord ; the chasseur claims it, the nurse 
will have it. The right of precedence of the great powers of the antechamber is 
warmly discussed. One dwells upon the importance of his office, and the lace 
upon his embroidered coat ; the other brings forward the sacredness of her em- 
ployment, which leaves to her care the heir-presumptive to the mansion. The hall 
is divided into two camps, but the envy that all the lower servants cherish in secret 
for those who are admitted to the apartments of the family, gives the majority to the 
chasseur. The wing of the fowl falls into his plate, and the Nurse leaves the table 
turning in her hand her apron, and in her heart projects of vengeance. She 
is sulky one day, two days, nay, even three days, if necessary ; her face is most 
imperturbably serious. She affects the disdainful anger of a great lady insulted 
by low people ; even her dress is neglected, and lamentable sighs heave her bosom. 
The anxious mother tries to penetrate the distressing mystery, carefully hidden 
from her with the sole view to give it more importance. At last, after a. thousand 
turnings and circumlocutions, interrupted by many plaintive exclamations, the 
history of the wing of the fowl is related in all its enormity, with the addition of 
many little falsehoods and softly-uttered calumnies, which blacken the poor chasseur, 
and make herself appear in the likeness of an injured and persecuted dove. Poor 
victim to an infernal plot, she is withering like a flower deprived of air and sun ; she 
is refused necessaries, she who would shed the last drop of her blood for the dear 
infant she loves so much. Her increasing embonpoint, the glittering roundness of 
her neck, ornamented with a double chin, might give a startling denial to this 
melancholy elegy : but in all this the mother only sees her child. She has so often 
been told that children can only thrive when suckled by good-tempered nurses, that 
she fears already to see her offspring fall a victim to the culinary misfortunes of his 
nurse. The chasseur is immediately sent for, severely reprimanded, and seriously 
informed that the delicate stomach of a wet-nurse has peremptory rights, to which 
obedience is due. From this day a silent but deep hatred springs up between her 
and the other servants ; but, proud of her position, and vain of her first triumph, she 



340 THE WET-NURSE. 

laughs at the efforts of the coalition she overrules from that day, in the kitchen, as 
well as in the drawing-room. 

Women, like children, are unconscious of their strength until they have tried it, 
but directly they know it, they use and abuse it without pity and mercy. The 
success of her first attempt having shown the Nurse the extent of her power, she 
hastens to put it again to the proof. 

Transplanted from the country, where, from morning till night, she was hard at 
work, to the town, where the cares of nursing would be her only occupation, it is 
to be feared that the silence and shade of a mansion in the Chaussee d'Antin would 
Dot agree with the health of the robust nurse, accustomed to activity, to fresh air, 
and sunshine ; the change would be too rapid and too great : therefore, to avoid all 
evil consequences, and to keep her blood in free circulation, according to the doctor's 
advice, certain little duties are given to her, the performance of which requires a 
little exertion without any fatigue. She has only to arrange and clean her room, 
to make the bed, and to prepare the cradle. 

At first, humble and attentive, she fulfils her task with great punctuality and un- 
equalled zeal; but such praiseworthy industry is of no long duration; her natural good 
qualities cannot resist the breath of bad passions. After her victory over her fellow- 
servants, she thinks it very wrong of her mistress to let her fatigue herself sweeping 
and cleaning like a mere housemaid ; such low occupations are incompatible with 
her position : she is paid to be nurse, and not a servant. A fresh struggle then 
begins, which ends, as before, in the triumph of the Nurse. She murmurs in a low 
tone, sighs, groans, and complains of distressing pains, which proceedfrom great weak- 
ness. If her mistress feigns not to understand her, the pains become intolerable, the 
appetite ceases, and a complete prostration of strength ensues. The doctor, when 
consulted, discovers no fever ; but the mother, fearful for her child, prescribes 
immediately the most absolute repose ; and the return of the Nurse's health and 
spirits coincides with the given order. The Nurse has again conquered. An 
under- servant is forthwith charged with the care of her apartment ; and, like her 
mistress, she orders and finds fault if every thing is not in order an hour after she 
condescends to rise. 

However, the child thrives, it begins to use its little limbs, and wants air and 
exercise. The doctor advises its being taken out, and the nurse and the child are 
sent to the Tuileries, — that sunny resort for infancy and old age. All this is very 
well ; but at the end of a short time the Nurse again shows progressive symptoms 
of discontent. A cross answer is ever ready on her lips, and her ill-humour is par- 
ticularly observable on her return from her walk. At last, after minute inquiry, her 
mistress discovers that the distance from the Rue du Mont Blanc to the Tuileries is 
too great for a poor woman who, a few months since, could walk three or four 
leagues with the greatest ease. Now her strength is unequal to a few turns in the 
gardens, with alternate sittings on the chairs arranged under the shade of the horse- 
chestnut-trees ; her limbs tremble, and she feels that it is only her devotedness to 
the child that enables her to endure this daily labour. She gets no rest at night, 
the baby screams and cries, and in the morning the Nurse's eyes are heavy. The 
mother is alarmed, and, anxious for the restoration of her health, she is willing to 



THE WET-NURSE. 341 

try everything: to attain that paramount object. The next day her mistress's carriage 
is stationed at the gate of the Tuileries, waiting the Nurse's pleasure to go home. 

But pride, like idleness, is insatiable. It is not enough to go home in the carriage; 
she must go out in it, drawn by two horses elegantly harnessed ; and it would 
appear that what a Wet-nurse wills, God wills, for she soon contrives not to touch 
with her feet the pavement of the street leading to the Tuileries. 

The Nurse receives to the day her monthly wages, which are spent indis- 
criminately to satisfy her uncontrolled whims ; and as by bad management they are 
soon absorbed und wasted, it often happens that she seeks vainly for a crown in 
the desert of her pockets or her boxes. It is then that she becomes learned in the 
great science of all the ministers of finance, and necessity teaches her how to increase 
a regular budget by additional chapters, extraordinary credits, and indemnified 
expenses, — vulgar routine of financial measures, specially adopted by representative 
governments. The Nurse stands before her master and mistress in the situation of 
a minister of finance before the Chambers s she begs for votes of money. But she 
has a great hold upon "the mother's feelings, and with wonderful skill she makes the 
best of her advantage. The Nurse, at that game, could beat the most experienced 
diplomatist : there are no tricks she cannot play, no strings too difficult to move, no 
intrigues too intricate to attain her object. She knows how to be alternately 
tractable and stiff, good-tempered and cross, gloomy and cheerful, merry and sad, 
artless and deep, impudent and timid ; but she invariably brings forward her nursling 
— the ram whichbatters down all obstacles ; the sinew of thatin visible but indefatigable 
war that she incessantly wages against her master's purse. The nursling is a 
hammer and block, in constant use to coin fresh money. 

The extra allowances she obtains without seeming to exact them, come under all 
sorts of forms — in hard cash on anniversary days — in all kinds of presents, whenever 
the opportunity occurs : gowns, silk handkerchiefs, caps, collars, aprons, everything 
is acceptable to her insatiable vanity. The golden chain and cross have long 
been the objects of her desire, but there is the baby cutting its first tooth, and she 
generally obtains them on that great solemnity. 

She shares with the lady's maid, acting camera major, the left-off wardrobe of her 
mistress ; to the one that dress, and this to the other. The division is generally 
made amicably, for, among the servants, the lady's-maid is the only one with whom 
the Nurse lives in peace, — and yet it is an armed peace. They are two powers that 
respect, but envy one another. 

Of the Nurse's wages we may say, — what is often the case with many things of 
this world, — the accessories are better than the principal ; and it so happens that the 
multifarious indirect allowances she has pocketed under all shapes during the month 
are much above her salary. 

Meantime, the chrysalis has shaken off her first skin. After a few months of 
residence in Paris, the coarse envelope, under which was concealed the pretty and 
rosy fly, has disappeared. The country girl has thrown away one by one, and little 
by little, every piece of her rustic costume : you could no longer recognize the native 
of Berry by her straw bonnet, or the " Cauchoise" by her high cap. There are few 
who can withstand the allurements of coquetry, and a smart dress soon supersedes 



342 THE WET-NURSE. 

the peasant's plan attire. Her cap is now trimmed with handsome lace ; the 
silken strings of her shoes are carefully crossed over fine white stockings, the sleeves 
of her gown are fashionably cut, and her shoulders are covered by an embroidered 
collar. One would suppose her a grisette going to a rendezvous. These improve- 
ments have taken place slowly and almost imperceptibly. The invidious eye of cooks 
can alone perceive them at once, from the white cotton petticoat up to the Swedish 
gloves. 

Good-looking, healthy, smart, courteous, and ever on the look-out for admirers, 
the Nurse, in all her glory, struts at the Tuileries, in company with her sisterhood, 
where babies amuse themselves in the best manner they can, by sucking their 
thumbs or their corals. Their attentive guardians have many other things to attend 
to than to watch them. Nurses are not to abdicate flirtation, that everlasting comfort 
of feminine minds. 

At the Tuileries the Nurse holds levies. Her drawing-room is a clump of chestnut 
trees ; she is enthroned on a bench, or two chairs, and her admirers pay her their 
respects either in the walk of the Feuillants in the summer, or, in the winter, at the 
" Petite Provence."* The number of her beaux increases or is reduced according 
to the variations which take place in the garrison of Paris. A member of the sta- 
tistical society could calculate at a glance the number of regiments garrisoned in 
Paris, by the number of soldiers standing or loitering by her side. The artilleryman 
is there conspicuous by his red aigrette and his heavy walk on the gravel ; the horse- 
soldier goes forward and backward, and the rays of the sun glitter on his long sabre 
and polished spurs ; the foot- soldier passes with his regimental cap slightly inclined 
on one side, and his little finger on the seam of his inexpressibles, as you may see 
him at the review of his regiment. There also may shine the golden helmet of the 
fireman, whose inflammable propensities have won for him a proverbial name. 
There a conflict of gallantry is daily going on, where competitors vie against each 
other with cakes, sugar-plums, and echaudes, — modest offerings of a soldier-like love, 
of which each pretender claims the exclusive privilege. 

Here a serious question presents itself to our consideration. Does the Nurse, 
during her temporary residence in Paris, preserve her former innocence, and remain 
there as virtuous as novel-writers pretend her to be in her village ? Let us at once 
declare it ; notwithstanding certain suspicious signs to the contrary, the Nurse's 
character remains generally as unspotted as her apron. But, as an impartial and true 
historian, we beg leave to say that she is chiefly indebted for the purity of her 
Parisian life to the very active watch kept upon her by her mistress. The flesh is 

weak, but the spirit is willing, as every body knows, and perhaps . But it is 

of no use to speculate upon intentions when they are unsupported by facts. 

During her daily peregrinations to the shady walks of the Tuileries, the Nurse 
makes a certain number of acquaintances, plainly dressed in frock coats, or rather 
in regimentals, who occasionally visit her in the mansion. It is not uncommon to 
see one of them quietly seated at the dinner-table in the servant's hall, with nice 
slices of mutton in his plate, and a bottle of wine before him. To all questions that 

* Two walks in the garden of the Tuileries, the second of which is sheltered from the winter 
winds. 



THE WET-NURSE. 343 

might be asked of the Nurse about it, she has a ready-made answer, invariably the 
same, and invariably adopted by all nurses in Paris, Brest, or Marseilles ; every one 
of these acquaintances is a countryman, and in case of need a country cousin. It 
would indeed be ungracious to refuse a bit of dinner occasionally to the relatives 
of the woman who suckles the young heir, for it is not impossible that the answer 
may chance to be the truth. Therefore, the Nurse is, in some respects, at liberty to 
do the honours of the servants' hall, but great care is taken not to let her do them 
en tete-a-tete. 

Eighteen or twenty months have now elapsed ; a revolution is going to take place 
in the material education of the child ; his stomach requires a more substantial food ; 
to the milk succeeds pap. From this moment, to protract as long as possible the 
sweet enjoyments of her easy existence, the cunning nurse has recourse to all sorts 
of tricks. To put off the fatal instant, she leaves no means untried. Her active 
mind is incessantly engaged in the discovery of new ones. A quarter of an hour 
before the abominable food, the object of her hatred, is presented to the baby, she 
takes care to give him a superabundance of milk; and the child, who would willingly 
suck up to the time of his classical education, repulses the food with horror, un- 
heeding of the caresses lavished upon him. This will do for a little while ; but at 
last the decisive hour is at hand. Notwithstanding all the Nurse's tricks, she cannot 
put off any longer the weaning of the baby, and her reign is over. She parts with 
her nursling with tears in her eyes, and a sorrowful heart. A magdalen could 
hardly repent more bitterly ; but it is not her love for the child that makes her so 
miserable ; other feelings are also blended with her sorrows. She weeps over her 
wages, her extra allowances, and the good cheer she has so long enjoyed. With 
the clamorous expression of her grief, her stomach has as much to do as her heart. 

As to the maternal affection, which, according to some philanthropists, goes along 
with suckling, experience shows, alas ! that it is not of long duration, and seldom 
resists absence. It generally lasts no longer than the cause that produces it, and 
subsides when it ceases to act. There are, however, some exceptions to this 
general rule. 

After the Nurse has left her first situation, she is fully sensible of what she has 
lost, and is, of course, very anxious to regain it. Sometimes, by means of very 
extraordinary exertions, she contrives to procure a second child to suckle imme- 
diately after the first ; but the case is rare, as prudent mothers generally object to a 
milk already old. More generally, the nurse returns to her home, to live there with 
her husband and family ; but she has lost her habits of industry, and the recollection 
of the luxuries of Parisian life haunt her in her farm, where she hardly finds the 
most ordinary comforts. Then she tries to persuade her husband, a good strong 
labourer, simple and good-natured, that paternity is a capital source of riches, and 
that every child God sends him, brings an annual income without any trouble for 
him. Thus, his fortune will be made when he shall have favoured the world with a 
half-dozen of little cherubs. The farmer cannot resist such decisive arguments, and 
so complete is his conviction, that, with God's assistance, nine months after her 
return, the Nurse is delivered of a second child, or, to use her own language, she 
obtains an additional income. She soon goes to Paris again, and her strong health 



344 THE WET-NURSE. 

and good looks obtain immediately a situation for her. The farmer's wife is once more 
a nurse, and she begins anew her work, her poutings, her walks, and her pecuniary- 
extortions. During a second series of twenty months, she squeezes a new family, 
and turning to account her former experience, she takes more advantage of the 
maternal feelings of her second mistress. She now saves money, and sends suc- 
cessively to the country some little sums, which, accumulated, will pay the purchase 
money of a mill, or a piece of ground. In the meantime, she heaps up a quantity 
of clothes, for which she has only to thank her mistress ; and by means of some 
economy and an easy management, she lays up a store of comforts for her future life. 

At thirty years of age, her career is at an end. The Nurse has then four or five 
children of her own, perhaps more. Her husband's farm is now his own property, 
and it is increased in extent by the addition of a few adjoining acres, paid for in 
milk. 

Suckling is now a lucrative profession, and is held in high and honourable esti- 
mation in the country. It is considered as one of the regular employments of 
peasant women ; and when a healthy young girl marries the village miller, or a young 
farmer just setting up for himself, the profits attendant on the future exercise of this 
profession are reckoned by her mother as a great addition to the marriage portion. 




I X LA TOILETTE." 




THE "REVENDEUSE A LA TOILETTE.' 



BY ARNOULD FREMY. 




A LADY passes you in the street, followed at a short 
distance by a provincially awkward and timid young 
man : she is one of those who may be freely followed 
and escorted without reflection or from instinct, as one 
might carelessly watch the capricious motions of a 
may-fly, or the fantastic flight of a butterfly. She 
trips along, and as she walks affects a studied atti- 
tude ; her flexible and slender form resembles at once 
the wasp's and the serpent's ; her foot is delicately 
confined in a bronzed morocco brodequin, and if you approach her you smell musk 
and patchouli. This indeed is quite enough to dazzle and turn the head of a sen- 
timental young solicitor's clerk, who has never ventured to address a word of 
gallantry in the open air — one of those young men who in the country are invaria- 
bly termed " very steady," and by the gay nymphs and roystering blades who 
resort to the Grande Chaumiere, a " plodding bumpkin." 

All at once the young man's manners undergo a complete change, and he amends 
the cut of his clothes : he becomes a dandy ; wears yellow gloves, recklessly turns 
down his shirt collar, and indulges the luxury of a pink or carnation in his button- 
hole. Whence this sudden metamorphosis of dress and appearance ? He one day 
met in the street, and in a fit of enthusiasm followed one of the perfumed young 
ladies described in the opening paragraph, and this rencounter produced a com- 

Y Y 



346 THE "revendeuse a la toilette." 

plete revolution in his life and future prospects. Again he sees and meets her, 
times out of number ; her brilliant image incessantly haunts his imagination ; he 
fancies himself driving with her in the Bois de Boulogne, and dreams he is yawning 
through the last new ballet in her box at the opera. All this passes through his 
disturbed mind when he is employed at his office, and not unfrequently absorbs his 
thoughts while his fingers are busy engrossing a deed of separation. After a few 
months of hopeless passion, the young man becomes pale and thin, and begins to 
neglect his duty. He is lost to the law. His livid and distorted face is encircled 
by a handsome gothic beard, and perhaps he turns vaudevillist or playwright ; but 
it is quite certain that his professional prospects are ruined. All this through 
having at a street-corner met an impossible love, in the garb of an elegantly- 
dressed and perfumed young lady. Musk must have engendered lots of scribblers ! 

Presently the scene changes to the shop-front of a Magasin de Nouveaute's : every 
window is tastefully set out with all descriptions of fashionable apparel; silks, 
velvets, lavantines, Cashmeres, figured muslins, China crape, pekinets, gros-de- 
Naples, brocaded satins, Valenciennes and Mechlin lace, mousselines-de-laine et 
de-coton, &c, ad infinitum : each of these articles ticketed and marked at a reduced 
price, and nothing neglected capable of attracting female attention, robbing tender 
hearts of innocence, and in its place implanting envy, wild desires, and ambitious 
dreams — those monsters of coquetry which, with diamond teeth, gnaw and devour 
the youth and inexperience of pretty women. 

A young lady with braided hair, a small basket in one hand and one of Ro- 
dolphe's solfegios in the other, takes her station before the shop-window. If you 
could look into her bosom, you would see her guileless heart violently beating and 
reflecting back the gay colours of the dazzling stuffs on which she is so intently 
gazing ; you would see it in turns glazed, figured, brocaded, incessantly haunted 
by wishes of every glittering hue of the rainbow, by fringed fancies, by flounces, by 
sky-blue hopes, by wings of azure and lace. The young lady sighs, as, with 
despairing looks, she measures the distance that separates her black apron and 
hand-basket from the ells of point-lace, and the splendid furred mantillas exposed 
for sale. Every morning, on her way to her warehouse, or to the Academy, the 
poor girl stops at this shop-window, and is, during the space of a quarter of an 
hour, a duchess or a countess — through the plate-glass. The rest of her time is 
spent in binding shoes, or practising fioritures, under the direction of M. Ponchard. 
Alas ! to be able to see all these treasures of luxury only through the magic prism 
of a window ! She has not, like the great lady, the privilege of having every article 
submitted to her, of examining and handling everything on the counter, sufficiently 
excused by a handsome equipage waiting for her in the street, and a tall livery- 
servant stationed at the shop-door. The rich alone may turn over as well as ad- 
mire the tradesman's goods, without being obliged to purchase. 

What would that simple-minded countryman, standing beneath the balcony over 
the way, and smitten with the fair nymph who graces the garret- window above — 
what would he say, and what would you, O! Olympe, Amanda, Modeste, or Virginie! 
— what would you say, if some one were to come and tell you that, not in twelve 
months, not at some indefinite future time, but to-day, this very night, if you like, all 



THE Ci REVENDEUSE A LA TOILETTE." 347 

that this morning you devoured with your eyes, through Burty or Gagelin's window, 
shall be given to you, absolutely offered you, without anything being asked in 
return, not even your own innocence; — the gros- de-Naples gown, the shawl 
trimmed with lace, the white crape drawn-bonnet, the aristocratic fan with coloured 
landscapes after Watteau, the embroidered handkerchief, the morocco brodequins : 
— in a word, an enchanting, finished, and irresistible toilette, with the assistance of 
which you may safely claim the title of lady, unless you prefer being to-night a 
queen in the quadrilles at Ranelagh ? 

And you, young man, fascinated by the fair enslaver you lately met, throw 
Faublas out of your window, and waste no more money bribing porters. The lady 
whom you have seen shining at so many " first nights," or, like a morning flower, 
sauntering beneath the shade of the trees on the Boulevarts, whose slightest mo- 
tions have not escaped you, whose steps you have been watching — know that 
she wholly and solely belongs, body and chattels, to another woman, who is more 
than her creator, her dress-maker, or her guardian-angel, since she dispenses out 
her charms, or at least the means of showing them to the best advantage. This 
Metternich of fashion and of love, this female cameleon, this sphynx of a hundred 
riddles, this thousand-eyed Argus it is, who, incognito, controls and regulates the 
fluctuations and the course of love's exchange — -who is the agent of its rises and 
falls — who, serpent-like, glides and finds entrance everywhere; — an incalculable 
power, sovereign bank, hidden, but irresistible domination ; — in a word, a mar- 
vellous, incomparable, and unique creature, whom doubtless the reader has already 
recognized as the " Revendeuse a la Toilette." 

The prettiest woman in the Chaussee d'Antin is stretched on her sofa unwell and 
complaining ; like many fragile ladies of that fashionable quarter of Paris, she is 
subject to nervous affections, and has almost as many creditors as nerves. 

" Rosalie, mind I am at home to no one, absolutely no one." These instructions 
are scarcely given, when the door-bell is rung, and Mme. Alexandre almost imme- 
diately afterwards enters the room. 

How would it be possible to refuse admittance to Mme. Alexandre ? The 
lady is in want of nothing ; she has heaps of dresses, shawls, and furs, and many 
that she never wears : but no matter ; no human power could prevent Mme. 
Alexandre from emptying her bundles, opening her boxes, and covering the chairs, 
tables, and sofa with shawls, lace, furs, ribbons, and all the paraphernalia of a 
milliner's shop. Resist all this tempting display if you can ; only look at this 
mantilla, this Cashmere, the trimming of this dress ! And all so new, so fresh, 
and never worn. 

The languid lady rises from her sofa, and arranging her hair under a transparent 
gauze bonnet that she is tempted to try on, says, as she looks at herself in her 
psyche, " Really I am just now so poor, that — ■ — " 

" Not of the slightest consequence, dearest madam," interrupts the Revendeuse; 
" a little bill at two months will do as well as cash. Will those terms suit ? You 
are truly charming in that bonnet. You need not ring, I have got a stamp in my 
pocket. If I were you, I would tie the ribbons a little lower. You know that the 
old gouty Prince * * *, who has the fleetest horses in Paris, adores you. Sup- 



348 THE " REVENDEUSE A LA TOILETTE. 

pose I say at six weeks, instead of two months ; that will suit me better. How 
nicely you look, my darling, in that bonnet and shawl. Little N * * *, of the 
Opera, will die of vexation when she sees you. Shall I trouble you to sign ?" 

On quitting this customer, Mme. Alexandre repairs to a neighbouring entresol, 
inhabited by M. Alphonse, one of the yellow-gloved habitues — we may say debtors — 
of the Cafe de Paris. Is the gentle reader surprised at Mme. Alexandre carrying 
blond lace, Cashmeres, and bonnets, to a frequenter of the Cafe de Paris ? We 
crave his patience, and invite him to read on. 

" Oh ! good morning, Alexandre ; how are you, my dear?" 
" So so, M. Alphonse. I have just been calling on a certain lady ; she requested 
me to ask you whether you prefer a pelerine trimmed with sable or chinchilla ?" 

"■ Egad ! I do not care a doit. Chinchilla, chinchilla ! that sounds like the 
name of a mare. By the way — good b'ye, good b'ye, Alexandre. You know that 
I have nothing to do with the lady's expenses." 

" Certainly, Madame would not for a moment permit such a thing. She merely 
wishes me to ask you for your opinion, your taste is so excellent. Besides, she has 
found out that M. de * * * — you know who I mean — the pale young man who plays 

so deep at 's, has laid a wager, that Mademoiselle Anastaise shall outshine 

every other beauty at the Opera to-night." 

" Damn the blockhead ! What's the price of this famous pelerine, trimmed with 
chinchilla ?" 

" Oh ! what you like, as usual ; you know I have no prices with you ; only give 
me a little bill — at two months, or say at six weeks, if you like that as well. I 
have a stamp about me." 

In Turcaret's days, the Revendeuse was called Mme. Jacob, or Mme. La Ressource : 
at the present time her name is Mme. Alexandre. Her name is changed, but the 
trade properly so called is still the same ; it requires infinite tact, a mixture of 
crafty policy, coolness, good-nature, boldness, and humility : — in short, diplomatic 
talents of the first order. 

The Revendeuse doubtless is open to blame and censure in the name of public 
morals ; but her profession may be considered under various aspects. After all, 
what is her trade ? She affords eminent and incontestible services to a certain class 
of individuals, who, were it not for her, would in vain look for credit, tradesmen, 
dresses, and advances of money. She is a kind of household providence, necessarily 
with her weak side, and also with her useful and meritorious qualities. She may 
plunge you into debt and ruin you without the least concern, but she sometimes 
retrieves and saves you. No one can make a fortune without debts and a little 
usury. 

Thus, a Revendeuse one morning surprises a fashionable lady at home, enveloped 
in her peignoir, and a prey to bitter grief : poor dear lady ! Abandoned the day 
before by her kind protector ; with him fled her five hundred francs a-month. The 
Revendeuse enters in the midst of her bemoanings : " Dry your tears, my dear! 
here is wherewithal to shine among the most elegant dames in Paris, and this very 
day to regain your position. I know your dread of acceptances, and your aversion 
to the sight of a stamp, and am willing to let you have, on hire, a complete toilette 



THE "REVENDEUSE A LA TOILETTE." 349 

— feathers, velvet, lace, jewels, and all, for a week, or for a month : you may 
subscribe even for six months of coquetry and brilliant dresses." Find us a creature 
more accommodating than that ! Is it not genius, thus to be able to realize a 
profit of fifteen or twenty per cent., by taking compassion on the misfortunes and 
faded garments of a pretty woman ? Alas ! why has not every trade its Mme. La 
Ressource ? Why do not the painter and the poet enjoy equal privileges ? But 
the system itself of the usury is deplorable. Money is advanced on a pretty face, 
but genius will not be taken in pledge : Parnassus is as yet without a pawnbroker. 

Let us not however confound the Revendeuse with the shopkeeper (marchande). 
The race of the latter is lost in the common flock of ordinary travelling tradesfolks ; 
she sells, trades, and retails, like everybody else ; she has a visiting connexion of 
several fashionable ladies, whom she enables to satisfy their passion for novelty; but 
this is merely every- day trading : the woman will speak of her conscience and her 
morals ; we believe that she has probity, and that she pays a regular license. 

Not so the Revendeuse. She confines her circle of customers to the equivocal 
sphere of coquettes who do not pretend to be incorruptible ; but nature has bestowed 
on her, or, if you will, lent her without interest, a considerable share of genius. 
This genius shines conspicuous in every action of her life, particularly in making a 
purchase ; for the Revendeuse buys also, and this is the most important branch of 
her profession, and at the same time her most admirable qualification in her 
customers' eyes. Admire her extraordinary talent ! On her closed hand she 
presents to you some article of dress, say a pink satin bonnet. Her praises would 
almost tempt one to fall on one's knees and worship the flowers that adorn it, and 
to lose oneself in admiration of the ribbon, the feathers, the crape, the lace, that are 
lavished on the fascinating piece of finery : — and so tasteful, so fashionable, so new ! 

But should the purchaser feel inclined to part with the same bonnet before the 
Revendeuse has left the room, the simple circumstance of passing from the hands of 
the Revendeuse, as a seller, into the hands of the Revendeuse as a buyer, makes the 
bonnet ten years old, and sacrifices cent, per cent, of its fashion. The ribbons, twenty 
minutes before as fresh as a rose, are now frightfully faded and crumpled. Who 
would wear such a bonnet ? At noon, pink, and nothing but pink, was worn ; but 
at twenty minutes after twelve, " Oh dear ! who wears pink this summer ? If it 
were yellow, lilac, coquelicot, or grey, something might be done ; but pink is almost 
as sombre as mourning." 

It is certain that in the gestures, the attitude, the language of the veritable 
Revendeuse, there is something that embellishes, magnifies, and confers a lustre on 
the articles she sells, and that at the same time depreciates and deteriorates what 
she buys. She is unsurpassed in this particular : her hand, like Midas', turns to 
gold all it touches, according to the touchstone of her commerce. A Cashmere 
comes from her box a real India shawl, and will be returned to it a simple Lyons 
Cashmere. When next produced, it will have become the legitimate and authentic 
produce of Sirinagur. Remarkable woman ! to possess the gift of thus baptizing and 
conferring a country on the erratic stuffs and questionable goods she carries about ! 
She sells everything, and will buy everything ; she would sell you even the pope's 
slipper, if you would pay a reasonable profit. 



350 THE "revendeuse a la toilette." 

Where does she live ? Where are her warehouse and her household gods 
situate ? Who can tell ? To speak properly, she has no other lodgings or home 
than the pavement and staircases that she tramps from morning till night, carrying 
an immense wooden bandbox tied round with a piece of list : she has lodgings in 
some obscure corner, but very rarely has a shop. It is generally believed that she 
connives with the police, but nothing can be more untrue, for though the police 
occasionally sell, they never buy : like certain private gambling-houses, she enjoys 
a sort of unacknowledged tolerance. Her lodging is very meanly furnished, and 
resembles a hiding-place ; it contains only presses, and it is easy to perceive that 
its occupant is almost constantly out of doors. She has many aliases, and changes 
her name as often as her customers change their bonnets. 

Her personal appearance is simple, and is extremely well known in Paris. 

Fancy a stout portly woman, between forty and fifty, her nose grimed with snuff, 
with a pocketed black apron, an ample plaid shawl that reaches to her heels, a puce 
silk gown, a straw bonnet, worn slightly on one side; a wooden bandbox under her 
arm, the other hand planted on her hip; the curls of her front dismally hanging in 
her eyes, a gold watch at her waist, pearl drop- earrings, rings on every finger; a 
pinched-up mouth, squinting eyes, teeth as large as dominoes, and wearing pattens : 
— such is the Revendeuse. 

All dialects are familiar to her, and especially that of the south. High in her 
estimation stands that class of traders with uncertain profits and hidden manoeuvres, 
lenders on pledge, itinerant jewellers, tailors from Havre or Haiti, who exchange 
new clothes for old, purchasers of pawnbroker's duplicates, speculators living in 
cellars, who occasionally leave their heirs a million francs in Monaco coin and pro- 
tested bills. 

Morally considered, the Revendeuse' s traffic stands open to severe reproaches, as 
guilty at once in its origin, and by the underhand dealings used to carry it on. 
Perhaps we should slightly darken the background of the picture, to bring out in 
the distance the faces of certain ruined females bearing the indelible stamp of shame 
and despair. Quite certain it is that more than one innocent being has fallen a prey 
to temptation, incessantly thrown, in her way in the shape of lace and ribbons. 
The Revendeuses are indefatigable satanic counsellors, who mercifully attack 
women on their weakest side — vanity and love of display ; they entice them into 
their snares, and are constantly on the look-out for more tempting baits. It is too 
often the attractive power of Cashmeres and lace that, step by step, leads a woman 
to the last refuge of vice and sorrow, which ought to have for founder the richest 
and most considerable of the whole tribe of Revendeuses — the Hospital. 

But how should is be otherwise. For some time to come, manners in France will 
go on lightly skimming oVer the surface of great moral questions. We have phi- 
losophers and moralists ; but while we commend their just recriminations, we do not 
hasten to adopt their reforms. Thus, before she is proclaimed a great abuse, an 
acknowledged scandal, a great social immorality, the Revendeuse is, and will 
doubtless long remain to the public — t. e., those who never have any dealings with 
her — simply what she was in the time of Le Sage and Regnard, a character on the 
stage. 







THH PKKR OK FBANCK. 




THE PEER OF FRANCE. 



BY MARIE AYCARD. 




T may be necessary to observe, before we speak of the 
Peer of France, that the Peerage has gained by the 
Revolution. Before 1789, the nobility, as a body, had 
no political rights ; they formed no part of the 
Government, their privileges were limited to the 
useless prerogative of sitting in parliament, and they 
were reduced to a right of " veto," which was con- 
stantly evaded by orders in council. It was Louis 
XVIII. who constituted the Peerage a third power in the State ; the Revolution of 
July confirmed the work of the Exile of Hartwell; yet, in 1830, the bench of bishops 
disappeared ; one spiritual Peer only came to acknowledge the election of a king by 
the sovereignty of the people — this was the Abbe de Montesquiou ; we saw him 
enter in his black dress, with his powdered hair, the short mantle floating on his 
shoulders, and his three-cornered hat placed discreetly under his left arm ; he mur- 
mured the oath with a voice nearly inaudible, sat for a moment near the Ministers 
then left the house, to return no more ; and with him vanished from our eyes the 
last example of a Priest in the character of a Legislator and a Judge. Since the 
Charter of 1830, the circle from within which the monarch may select his Peers has 
been greatly enlarged, — presidents of commercial boards, academicians, bankers, 
landed proprietors, may all be named Peers : the aristocracy of birth no longer sits 
alone in the House ; she is hand in hand with the men of the people, whose tact or 



352 THE PEER OP FRANCE. 

whose talent have made their political fortunes. You may find, among these " lord- 
ships," one who has commenced his career as fourth clerk to a bailiff; another, who, 
with apron -girt waist, was shopman to one of those traffickers whose profession 
seems devoted to the jests of farce- writers, and the tricks of the sharper, namely, a 
grocer ! These new men are in a wretched minority in the House, and conciliate it 
neither with a jealous democracy, nor even with the nation, which regards them 
with a suspicious eye, because imagining (doubtless wrongfully) that the Peerage 
regrets the departure of hereditary honours, and because regarding this house (with 
more truth) as a compelled instrument of the ministerial will, since a minister can 
make Peers by the oven-fed whenever he feels doubtful of a majority. 

It is difficult to decide, exactly, whether the Peerage gains or loses in con- 
sideration, by the circumstance of its adding judicial powers to its legislative 
functions. 

This question, with many others relating to the Peerage, is foreign to our subject: 
it is not precisely of the political man that we are about to speak ; it is not only 
when clothed in his blue coat, embroidered with gold, and seated on his immutable 
chair, that we desire to exhibit the Peer of France. We mean to describe a singular 
species, which is dying without the hope of resurrection, because our institutions, 
our manners, our education, all change — all become modified ; and because the for- 
tunate occurrence of a Restoration which revived it once, will most probably 
return no more. It may not perhaps be amiss to assemble these vanishing features 
while they are yet before our eyes. 

The person we are now to consider is that gentleman of name and bearing whom 
the Charter of Louis XVIII. attached, by new rights, to the ancient Peerage of his 
ancestors, and which is traced back to Charlemagne as clearly as that of every good 
Peer of England must be to King Arthur, or to William the Conqueror, at least : 
this noble Peer carries, with indifference, a well-sounding name ; there is no one in 
the world to whom he is exactly attached, unless, perhaps, to his stock-broker, 
whom he sapiently advises, but with whom he is still not too familiar ; he has a clear 
political eye, but his extent of vision is not the less bounded by his personal interest 
and that of his " order ;" he readily perceives that the house is no vantage-ground 
for a struggle with the Ministry — one gains nothing by that, but an uncertain 
and according to him useless popularity ; he seeks his popularity elsewhere, and 
votes with ministers, or is neutral, but still the friend of ministers, most of whom 
were the companions of his childhood and his youth, or, at least, are in some way 
his allies. They, in their turn, affect to anticipate his wishes : they defer to him, they 
bow to him, and play him off with a thousand cajoleries, all of which he receives 
with dignity, and with an easy, careless, air, as who should say, "I am he who gives 
his vote and asks for nothing in return." It happens, nevertheless, very naturally, 
that his nearest relations have good appointments, his distant cousins are provided 
for, and the citizen he patronises makes his fortune. 

We are all equal in the eye of the law ; there is no longer " tithe or serfage," 
" statute service" or "rights of mortmain," nor do we now acknowledge " fiefs or 
feudal tenures," nor " high or low jurisdiction :" we have now imposts agreed to by 
Parliament, and bearing equally on all, in proportion to the fortune of each ; the 



THE PEER OF FRANCE. 353 

Peer is a landed proprietor ; he is consequently one of the largest tax-payers of his 
neighbourhood, and makes part of the general council of the department, where he 
invariably takes the chair ; on his estates he is sovereign lord : it is there that he 
shines ; when the district agrees to some assessment, it is he who fixes the amount of 
the additional pence; should the common weal require a bridge or a new cross-road, 
he will look to it ; is it desirable to carry a railway by such or such a time — it is he 
who will remove all difficulties ; do his neighbours desire a school, a house of refuge, 
or a lunatic asylum — these are his concerns ; he takes charge of them all, he will level 
whatever obstacle may arise, and, during the session, obtain every assistance from 
ministers. In fact, though rarely heard to speak in his place, he takes care to be on com- 
mittees for private bills: the report is favourable, and the House adopts it. It is true 
that the cross-road borders his property and increases its value, that the bridge leads 
directly to his gates, and that the schoolmaster is a person whom he protects; but the 
country, the district, has had nevertheless its views accomplished ; he has kept his 
promise, and it is not his fault if he is a landholder. Then his importance increases, 
his influence becomes popular, he is no longer called the Earl of this, the Marquis 
of that, or the Duke of the other, but the Earl, the Marquis, the Duke, and nothing 
else: every one knows how much that implies, and how vast a difference it makes. 

It is thus that, by little and little, the seignorial influence of 1780 is resuscitated ; 
the form is changed, but the fact remains as before ; it is like a river turned aside, 
which gently regains its channel without destroying its banks, and as if it were in 
in the natural order of things. The elections come round, he is a potency, — a 
friendly dominion which affords the ministry its powerful assistance. The session 
begins, and while he goes to take his place in the upper house, his eldest son is 
sent to the lower one by the free choice of the electors. The Minister of the 
Interior can do no less than give a sub-prefecture to his second hope ; while the 
third, a lieutenant of cavalry, is suddenly distinguished by the Minister of War, 
and gallops over the heads of his brother officers to a company. 

Any other person would have to intrigue for the gain or preservation of such a posi- 
tion, — would be compelled to solicit all these favours,— this complete establishment 
of his family ; but for him, he gives himself no trouble about the matter : he has a 
noble name, he is a Peer, he is rich ; all things come to him, because all are destined 
to come. The most distinctive feature of his character is indifference. He is not 
ambitious. What, indeed, has he to wish for ? A prefecture ? That would be to 
sacrifice his repose without increasing his personal importance ; he has, besides, 
attached himself to the reigning family only to secure the fortune of his children, while 
still carefully guarding his own freedom of action. Were he to accept an appoint- 
ment, he would compromise a future, uncertain perhaps, but possible : he thus 
obeys one of the adages, " all is possible." He has all the financial ignorance proper 
to the true gentleman; a receiver-generalship would not, therefore, suit him : there 
is the Ministry, but he is too much a man of the world, and too thoroughly 
averse to labour, to seat himself on that bench of suffering — it demands more de- 
termined gladiators. He is highly popular in all social assemblies of his caste, 
but is little known in the lower house. Without any exact acquirements, neither 
commerce, manufactures, navigation, nor war, are absolutely unknown to him — he 

z z 



354 THE PEER OF FRANCE. 

has heard them all named every day these twenty years ; but he is intimately 
acquainted with nothing ; he comprehends neither what constitutes their progress, 
nor what forms their hindrance; in short, he is no orator; he has a natural antipathy 
for being on his legs, the very thought strikes him dumb ; the sight of a rostrum 
half strangles him, whether it be of marble or mahogany. However, asking nothing, 
throwing an eye of disdain or indifference over all, he is dangerous to none, while 
he is a protector to many, and may be a help-meet for all. 

La Bruyere calls the courtier " hard and polished, like the marble of a palace." We 
do not think hardness a distinctive feature of the personage we are now describing, 
but assuredly politeness is so. This is one of his most striking peculiarities — one 
of his attributes. Observe him, how calm and mild his eye ! — how benevolent his 
smile ! And his voice ! how entirely it sympathizes with your sorrows or your joys. 
He listens to you ; he promises to grant your request ; or, if he refuse, it is with 
regret — with sadness quite affecting ; you leave him thoroughly satisfied. Gentle 
towards his people, he greets the very housemaids kindly, as Louis XIV. did 
the garden- weeders of Versailles. This mildness of manner is yet susceptible 
of change ; this amenity of character is liable to be disturbed ; there is one monster 
possessed of the fatal privilege of troubling his temper, and souring his blood : it is 
" Republic !" At the mere name of this bete noire, his eyes assume an expression 
of severity, his brow clouds, the smile vanishes from his lips, and he turns his head 
aside in dismay. All the slaughters of September rise up to his irritated imagina- 
tion ; the massacre of St. Bartholomew was a trifle compared to the sanguinary 
pictures that startle him at this ill-omened sound. He has yet to learn how it is, 
that from 1790 to 1805, " La Belle France" was not buried beneath her own ruins. 
Then does he rouse up his reminiscences : he carries back his thoughts to the period 
preceding the Revolution, and so chases the dark spectre ; for no man is better ac- 
quainted with the gay anecdotes of French history than himself, from the death of 
the Regent down to the Maupeou Parliament. He could furnish treatises to the 
memoir-manufacturers themselves : his grandfather witnessed the dawn of the reign 
of Louis XV. ; his father beheld its decline ; Madame de Pompadour uttered no 
word that he could not repeat to you, nor did Madame du Barry commit a folly that 
he has not shrined in his memory; he knows by heart all the etiquette of the Court, 
whether the old or the new ; and will discourse of the King's hunting parties, from 
the " booting and saddling" to the garrulous and boastful "return." In his child- 
hood, he once saw St. George ; his father was connected with the Viscount de 
Barras. " Monsieur de Barras, — a gentleman whose nobility was ancient as the 
rocks of his native Provence, a man of wit and courage, but whose opinions had 
not been rightly formed." There he pauses, and draws the line. From Barras he 
makes a spring to Louis XVIII. All the glory of the Empire is indifferent to him, — 
nay, it is distasteful ; it puts all his notions of the noble and gentle to the rout. 
These important contemporary events, these military distinctions gained by men of 
the people, give him a fit of ill humour. He would be content to accept the glory 
of the battles, but they have the great defect of not having been gained by noble- 
men ! It is a weakness that he acknowledges, but from which he cannot free him- 
self. He believes firmly in an " aristocracy of birth" — in the physical distinction of 



THE PEER OF FRANCE. 355 

castes. According to him, there is a something of exquisite delicacy that distin- 
guishes the noble from the city-born and the people. It is a peculiar fineness of 
skin, a sensibility of nerve, a form of feature ! He will point out to you the duchess, 
the lawyer's wife, or the shop-girl, though he see but the hand of each ; and this 
with all the accuracy that may happen. Nor is he without authorities to support 
this theory. Are there not Byron, Walpole, and D'Aubigne ? Admiring Voltaire 
like the marquises of the eighteenth century, he delights to quote from one of his 
tragedies the line, " Those whom heaven formed of race so pure ;" and the " those" 
he refers, of course, to himself and to his. He would not change his genea- 
logical tree for an undoubted Raphael ! A pleasing narrator, he has gained the 
reputation of talent in the difficult art of story- telling ; but his best anecdotes are 
those of the reign of Louis XVIII. He was then in his youth, and belonged to 
the maison rouge. Though not exactly a gastronomer, he is acquainted with all 
the culinary secrets of the Duke d'Escars : and possesses, in the Duke's own hand- 
writing, the recipes for those famous crepinettes and succulent grives-en-caisse, 
the exquisite taste of which consoled Louis XVIII. for all the annoyance inflicted 
on him by the Pavilion Marsan. 

Two articles of the Charter of 1830 wound him deeply. The twenty-third, 
which, in its twenty-eighth section, declares the number of Peers unlimited ; and in 
its trwenty-ninth, that a Peerage is not hereditary. It is true that the first of 
these clauses gives Ministers the means of repairing the disadvantages of the second; 
but in what sort ? — Ah ! Ehem ! Then the twenty-eighth clause — Ah ! pernicious 
twenty-eighth ! This attributes to the House judicial powers — decrees that it 
takes cognizance of high treason and crimes against the state : thus laying on him 
a burden that his shoulders hate to bear. He is a man of mild and cool character, 
as we have seen. A criminal trial is to him as a "perturbing influence," whose 
hostile force troubles the tranquillity of his days, and leaves his nights with- 
out repose. The aspect of the accused oppresses him ; long debates fatigue him ; 
the gabble of the counsel throws his spirit into inextricable confusion ; and, spite 
of himself, he believes that this prisoner, whose fate he must pronounce, is an 
honourable citizen, who may probably add every virtue of private life to whatever 
may be his political errors; who, if he had succeeded in his audacious enterprize, 
might have given him new masters, and before whom he might himself have then 
had to give account of his present position. Who knows that he would not find, 
if he sought well in the folds of his heart, a secret sympathy with some one or other 
of the obnoxious opinions ? Besides, the law threatens the penalty of death ! The 
black balls seem to swim in blood ! Were he to plunge his perfumed hand into 
the urn of votes, he would expect to draw it forth red and spotted ! A fever seizes 
him ; his forgotten rheumatism comes back ; his grievous and very civil gout pays 
him a visit : — he is ill ! Then the President receives a letter, eloquent in the recital 
of his sufferings and the expression of his regrets. The Moniteur announces that 
he cannot take part in the duties of the Court. Thus he purchases quiet days and 
" sleep o' nights," with a few embrocations and cups of camomile. But the decision 
once given, he becomes rapidly convalescent ; and presently after, with untroubled 
conscience, and a mind at ease, he returns to the House, and to his interrupted 
" committee on cross-roads." 



356 



THE PEER OP FRANCE. 



Without being at all religious, or the least in the world devout, he would yet be 
in despair if he had not some cousin wearing the mitre — if he could not say, " My 
uncle Vannes ;" or " My nephew Digne." He dreads the office of judge, as 
we have shown ; but is delighted to have a Lord Chief Justice in his family. " It is 
in good taste : it was thus in the olden time ; a great family should ever hold well 
by the sword, the silk apron, and the long robe ! " 

This man— of deportment so mild, so elegant, who, like Fontenelle, shuns all 
agitation, and permits himself to be strongly pre-occupied by no event — has yet 
experienced, he declares, all the violence of the passions. Under the Empire, when 
our victorious armies were overrunning Europe, he was alternately in Paris or in Italy. 
Young, rich, and under no control, this was the stormy period of his life. Had not 
affairs opportunely reached their crisis, had the Emperor not been vanquished, and 
had Louis XVIII. not returned, his fortune had been irretrievably injured : he was 
tearing it to ribbons for an opera-girl, and was selling his oaks for an Italian 
countess. At forty, however, he very luckily discovers that it is good to keep better 
order. A Peer of France ought not to seek his loves in a foreign land ; he cannot, 
with propriety, be liable to find a rival in some dancer. He takes up, then, with a 
real affection, — a solid attachment ; he becomes a new St. Lambert to a modern 
Madame d'Houdetot. It is he whom you have remarked every morning on horse- 
back, on the road to St. Cloud, followed by an empty caleche, and a groom bearing 
an enormous bouquet : he goes to take the Marchioness or the Countess for a drive 
in the park. He can no longer offer the warm love of youth, but this he replaces 
by an attachment at once graceful and solid. No one relates the anecdote of the 
evening, or the news of the day, better than he does. Assiduous without being 
troublesome, he knows how to say pretty things without falling into common- 
place; and, above all, has the merit of arriving and departing at precisely the 
proper moment. 

Always fortunate, always favoured by circumstances, at the end of fifteen years 
of a constancy proof against all temptation — of a union that nothing has had power 
to disturb — he finds a strange face one morning in the drawing-room of the lady be- 
loved. It is a personage in a black coat, with a timid air, and quiet abstracted eye. 

" Who is this gentleman ?" inquires he of the 
lady of the house. 
" Guess." 
" But how can I ?" 

" No, really ; but I was forty last month. — 
You do not guess ?" 

"Ah! pardon me. — Yes. Your confessor, 
Madame, without doubt ? " 
" Exactly." 

He is a man of good taste ; his life has been 
passed among diplomatists ; he has heard enough ; 
he bids friendship succeed to a love that was al- 
ready threatening to die. The same attentions, 
the same assiduities, and the same homage, are 
continued ; but the abbe makes always a third in 




THE PEER OF FRANCE. 



357 



their parties, and he prefers that it should be so. This convenient confessor has 
furnished him with a winding-up that he had long sought in vain, — has helped him 
to double the rock that was threatening to wreck his dying fidelity. Now that he 
is getting old, that he is no longer a lover, and that his lady has become devout, he 
may think more of himself, admit the weakness of his stomach, say his prayers with 
edifying regularity, and receive frequent visits from his physician. 

Although simply dressed, his costume is nevertheless marked by good taste ; and 
if he follow fashion, it is still with the tact of a clever old man, who would, above all 
things, avoid being ridiculous. He was always fond of horses, and of a handsome 
equipage : thus his carriage is still from the first builder, and his horses are the best 
that can be supplied by the Parisian Tattersall's stud. He lives in the Faubourg 
St. Germain ; and owns a vast hotel, well stored with historical recollections. It 
was Vatteau who decorated his drawing-room, Boucher who painted his wife's 
boudoir ; and the furniture, the ornaments, everything about him, is in the Pompa- 
dour style, for that was his epoch. Take care, you are seated in a chair once 
occupied by Voltaire ! Cagliostro passed two hours in this library ! The " Spirit 
of Laws/' magnificently bound, was a present from Montesquieu himself! Here 
Marmontel has read his "Tales," and Thomas his "Petreide!" In this dining- 
room, Monsieur de Maurepas has banqueted ! Such is the palace that he leaves 
every year to pass the summer at his estates, where other recollections await him. 
He sets off a fortnight before the close of the session, not exactly to see his corn 
got in, or his vintage gathered, but because June is drawing to an end, and July 
has never seen him in Paris : he was not there in 1830. Others may vote the 
budget. He calculates, nevertheless, on dying in his hotel; and the priest to assist 
him will be that same abbe, the familiar of his lady-friend. Everything sur- 
rounding him is linked into perfect order ; and 
he has managed so well that it is this very abbe 
who confesses his wife, and prepares his younger 
children for their first communion ! 

We said at the commencement that the equals 
of this nobleman are but thinly scattered through 
the House. It abounds in great landed proprietors 
who have no seignorial rights, in bankers, in men of 
learning and of science, and especially in parvenus 
of all kinds — a very estimable race, without doubt, 
but one that in changing its condition has not 
changed its pace. These new men are more 
highly-informed than their noble brothers, but 
also much more positive, and infinitely less polite. 
The Chamber, moreover, presents contrasts of all 
kinds — of talent, of age, of manners, and of fortune. 

Beside the Peer whose emblazoned carriage shakes the pavement of the Rue du 
Tournon walks his poorer brother, whose limited income enables him only to take, 
on rainy days, a hackney-coach or his seat in an omnibus. The omnibus from 
the Odeon has thus frequently conveyed to the Palais Royal the short- hand writers 




338 



THE PEER OF FRANCE. 




of the Moniteur, the reporters to the Tribune, and a noble duke,* who, having begun 
life like them, died lately, regretted by the upright men of all parties, after having 
gloriously served the Empire, and saluted anew the tricoloured flag. 

Like all deliberative assemblies, the Chamber has its mute members, gods of 
silence in embroidered coats, Harpocrates in 
blue, whose opinion is transmitted from their 
brain to their fingers without the assistance of 
their tongue ; who reserve their eloquence for 
secret committees, and for private meetings. We 
do not remember what sage of antiquity pro- 
nounced it to be easier to go to Corinth than to 
face the rostrum. It is remarkable that the ad- 
mirals who sit in the Upper Chamber speak but 
little, if at all : the voices that make themselves 
heard above the storm, that control the move- 
ments of fleets of ships, and command the 
thunders of their broadsides, become power- 
less when there are no orders to be given, 
when there is no necessity to use the speaking- 
trumpet. 

The doors are opened, but business has not yet commenced. Here comes Ariste 
he draws near the secretaries, consults the minutes, reads the order of the day, and 
takes his seat. He will do no more : he has played his part ; he only stays to vote, 
and because his carriage is not ordered till five o'clock. He is a nonentity ; the 
generation by whom he is surrounded is not his generation; he is one of the quiescent 
souls that people Elysium, and with calm indifference behold the passions of men. 

Do you see Caliste ? He is crossing the hall 
of "Pas Perdus" with an irregular step; he 
has a bundle of papers beneath his arm ; you 
would fancy him going to a " hearing" — a 
sitting of the judges ; he is himself astonished 
at not seeing the broad folds of his counsel's 
gown on his arm; he rubs his forehead, and 
pulls down his wig, as he did formerly at the 
Palace of Justice, when some unexpected argu- 
ment from his opponent had overturned the 
laboured structure of his plea. He takes his 
place ; he classes his papers ; and if it comes to 
his turn to speak, he mounts the rostrum. "The 
opposite party," says he : he corrects himself 
with a smile. " The noble lord preceding me, 
and to whom I have the honour of replying." — Caliste cannot forget the bar. 

The man seated near Caliste is M. Guillaume. His name is that of the creditor 
of L'Avocat Patelin, so well known to all lovers of the French drama ; and, like 
him, he has sold cloth all his life. He has invented a change in the woof, improved 







* The Due de Bassano. 



THE PEER OF FRANCE. 359 

a shearing-tool, and perfected a carding-machine. He may not have gone the length 
of imagining a new colour, but he has discovered a thousand new shades — always 
with the assistance of his dyer. Look at him! — You would suppose him examining 
the antique cameo that his neighbour wears on his fourth finger. By no means. 
It is the cloth of the coat that enchains his attention. " You have there," he 
remarks, "a very fine Cunin-Gridaine."* M. Guillaume sees the prosperity of 
France in her cloth trade. " Wool ! wool ! — It is there you have the true wealth of 
a country." He has studied .the matter down to the sheep that bears the wool, and 
to the treatment of the meadow that feeds the sheep ! 

Do you see, in a corner of the hall, that fat man, who moves with difficulty, but 
whose complexion is brilliant, and eye still lively ? — That is an agriculturist. He 
has been occupied with agriculture during forty years. He predicts good years or 
early frosts. If you want a few grains of seed, go to him : he will give you 
the best. He was never mistaken but once ; his knowledge fell prostrate before 
the giant cabbage ; he believed in the giant cabbage ! He has, besides, a sort of 
hesitation in employing the Jauffrey manure. 

There are some Peers who vote with ministers, because these last are made for 
drudging on in the regulation of this world's affairs, while they themselves may thus 
remain at leasure to follow the course of the stars, resolve mathematical problems, 
or decompose salts. Observe that old man who stands twisting the grey locks of 
his wig over his forehead, and is talking with a mild obsequious-looking Peer of 
sixty. The one is a retired prefect, the other was a great manufacturer of his de- 
partment ; the old man has the hasty tone, the proud look, the imperious air of his 
earlier day, — he has not lost his manners of the Empire when he was one of 
Napoleon's viceroys : the manufacturer listens to him, proposes his objections 
timidly, and ends by becoming of Monsieur the prefect's opinion ! The latter for- 
gets that he is speaking to an equal — the former that an ex-prefect issues decrees 
no more. These two are men of fixed habits. 

If, from the public gallery where you are placed, you see the door opened 
for a man whose plain cravat is admirably tied, whose well-fitted coat is closely 
buttoned, who wears his sword easily — you will readily guess the profession of 
this Peer — he is a soldier, a general ; he seats himself before that small table on 
which you see a thick blue pamphlet — it is the war estimates; he chooses his 
place near a marshal, within reach of an admiral, and beside a former secretary 
of war. He reads his estimates industriously, and if there arise any discussion 
" for the better regulation of the breed of horses," he starts like a trooper, who 
hears the " call to mount." Is the word recruiting pronounced, you shall see 
him listening with all his ears ! He began his career with Dumouriez at Jemappes ; 
he finished it at the feet of the Emperor at Waterloo ; he carries his head with an 
air of pride. The years that have borne down so many stately forms have respected 
his, or have not had power to bend it. Grave as an ancient statue, he has a disdain 
for words, and likes the sword better; for him, a whole age elapsed between 1795 
and 1815, the great age ! from 15 to 40, a hundred other years have dragged them- 
selves slowly by. Now, as to the great age, he was of it, he made a figure in it. 

* The present Minister of Commerce is a very eminent cloth-manufacturer. 



360 THE PEER OF FRANCE. 

This man is not proud of his peerage — his pride is in his sword, his cross, his scars 
of the Empire. 

Near him, before, behind, beside him, and like light horse hovering about the 
flanks of the " serried ranks," do you see the young Peers ? One permits the curls 
of his fair hair to fall floatingly over his youthful brow — another allows his young 
beard to shadow his cheek, and even to conceal his chin : these gentlemen are the 
latest products of hereditary succession — the last fruits of a tree now cut up by its 
roots : they are a political element which will reproduce itself no more. Many sons 
of generals more valiant, of senators more useful to their country, of ancestors more 
noble, in short, than were theirs, now have failed to be Peers as they are young 
people ; — confounded with the mass, because their fathers have lived an hour too long. 

The young Peer is the hope of rich heiresses and the pride of the Jockey Club; his 
path is strewn with roses, his hand is on the sceptre of power ; a young soldier, he 
is the colleague of the Secretary of War ; an aspirant at diplomacy, it is he whose 
vote is potent with the President of the Council, it depends but on himself to be the 
companion of princes ; should he belong to the Opposition, then he becomes popular 
ipso facto ; he is a Spartan, a faultless patriot ; a generous thought is doubled in 
value when it proceeds from youthful lips, and more especially if it seem threatening 
to shackle a commencing fortune. 

Do you see that little old man with a white wig on his bald head ? He walks 
with a cautious and somewhat sideling step ; observe how the embroidery of his 
coat is faded ! this is the man who, in all France, has most frequently raised his 
hand for the adoption or rejection of a clause. None has dropped so many balls as 
he into the ballot box ; he has been voting ever since the Assembly of Notables ; he 
is the Nestor of European deliberative bodies, perhaps the oldest " representative" 
in the world ; if he have left his downy arm-chair, if he neglect his rheumatism, if 
he stiffen himself against the crushing pains of his sciatica, it is because the House 
is going to vote. He who follows this veteran is still young ; his new coat shines 
with a glittering gold that the atmosphere of the house has not yet tarnished ; he 
is a new Peer : he treads the carpet with a proud step, he passes before the 
ministerial benches, bowing to their occupants with an air of gratitude : it is to the 
ministry, in fact, that he owes his new position ; an unfortunate candidate for a 
seat in the lower house, a royal ordinance avenged his defeat — he is a Peer because 
he could not be a Deputy. 

The public in the gallery have often smiled at hearing the orators of the upper 
house address, each to the other, the most exaggerated epithets. It is always the 
" noble," the " illustrious," the " learned," or the " very judicious lord preceding." 
My lords the Peers study the great models, and imitate them. Open Cicero in Catil.: 
" Si fortissimo viro, M. Marcello dixissem." And just so, " If I were to reply to the 
illustrious marshal," says the orator of the Peerage. Never does the Roman orator 
pronounce the name of a consul, without adding to it certain sonorous superlatives : 
if he address a general, it is " fortissimus vir;" if a civilian, " doctissimus ;" in short, 
if he speak to a mere youth, to one of those young men, in whom, by his own 
showing, one can but praise the promise, — the hope, he has still the art of giving to 
this name, as yet unknown, some laudatory qualification. " O adolescens optimus !" 



THE PEER OF FRANCE. 



361 



cries he : they do the same in the Chamber, and it is, of course, by no means to 
gratify aristocratic pride, but merely to imitate Ciceronian eloquence. 

All these men, young or old, magistrates or manufacturers, farmers or prefects of 
departments, are Peers, — there is no doubt of that. But the figure that presents itself 
to the imagination, when one thinks of a Peer of France, is that of a man who bears 
a great name, has estates, and is the owner of magnificent seats; whose family is cited 
in history, and who, by his age, his fortune, and bygone life, is equally above all 
present ambition, and all hope of bettering his state for the future. 

"There is no superiority but that of merit — no greatness but that of virtue." 
This maxim of Madame Roland's is often recalled to mind by the various features 
sketched in this paper. How many thousand leagues are there between Madame 
Roland and a French Peer ! 




THE END. 



London : 

Printed by T. Baker & Co., 

Holborn Hill. 



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